Daily Archives: September 8, 2021

A wonderful trend is developing in the world of TV drama commissioning. Someone at the top is saying, I like things cold and I like things wet. No sooner had the first season of the superlative nautical drama The Terror ended on the BBC (after being broadcast by AMC several years earlier) than the same channel announced The North Water, another superlative nautical drama, would also be coming to UK screens. If you like superlative nautical dramas, its very good news indeed.

The premises of the two programmes are so close its almost absurd. Based on novels set in the middle of the 19th century, the shows, both with essentially all-male casts, follow ships sailing doomed into frozen northern waters and ripped apart by ice and malevolent crew. The North Water is the story of Patrick Sumner (a fantastic Jack OConnell), a surgeon court-martialled from the army and carrying a laudanum addiction. On board the whaling ship The Volunteer which, unbeknown to him, is due to be scuttled by Captain Brownlee (Stephen Graham) for the insurance money Sumner must reckon with a different crime, unheard of in the close confines of a whaling ship: a murder.

The North Water follows the crew of The Volunteer. CREDIT: BBC/See-Saw Films

Chuckling, punching and looming over proceedings is the extremely hairy and extremely evil Henry Drax, a role that Colin Farrell embodies with a chilling authenticity. As Drax learns more of Sumners past, and Sumner realises that Drax will destroy anyone who gets in his way, The Volunteer becomes an even more terrifying place to be.

More unflinching than even The Terror in its portrayal of the details of a life at sea, The North Water horrifies as much as it engrosses you. We see seals clubbed to death and slit open, see men clubbed to death and slit open, and watch as the Arctic cold consumes the majority of the unfortunate crew. There is little hope here, and in Sumner we are given a narrator with Dr John Watsons medical background and Sherlock Holmes rationalism: a man who resents the idea that everything must happen for a reason, and who feels almost as though he is warning the viewer not to take any moral from his godawful story.

Jack OConnell and Stephen Graham in The North Water. CREDIT: BBC/See-Saw Films

As in The Terror, something jars ever so slightly when the characters are removed from their boats and either discover native communities or simply return to civilian life. Really what we want as viewers is for everyone to stay aboard the ship as things go from awful to sodding awful. The confines, as with so many shows set in a single location, are exactly what make the drama sing. But this is less a fault of the show than the novel on which it is based, whose success may not have relied so heavily on the sense of physical confinement.

For the most part, though its episodes are each an hour long, The North Water is wonderfully terrible and terribly wonderful. Its superb cast are testament to the quality of its script and cinematography. You wont regret devoting five hours to this beauty. Lets raise a glass to shows getting a great deal colder and a great deal wetter.

The North Water debuts on BBC Two this Friday September 10 at 9.30pm. All episodes will stream on BBC iPlayer from the same date

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'The North Water' review: a chilling adventure in Arctic conditions - NME

The DMK is not against religion. In fact, it is a fortress of spiritual people. That was the ruling partys Kumbakonam legislator G Anbalagan participating in the debate on demand for grants for the Hindu religious and charitable endowments (HR&CE) department in the assembly on Saturday. The MLA noted that his party had won 11 constituencies, including Kancheepuram, Triplicane and Mylapore, which are known for their temples.

This is in line with the DMK leaderships tactical navigation from its past of explicit atheism to implicit agnosticism and accommodative political realism. And that makes things difficult for the AIADMK and the BJP alike. The DMKs message is simple: Were no longer an idol-breaking group of atheists; we may still claim to maintain our rationalist roots, but we are also the secular guardians of religious practices whose custody we wouldnt give you, however deep the shade of your saffron is.

Pious old Hindus may not forget or forgive the DMK and its predecessors for their crass attacks on Hindu deities and rituals. Long after sections of Periyar supporters called off their violent roadshows, M Karunanidhi continued to employ his acerbic tongue against ritualists. In contrast, M K Stalin, long before his final lap to the Dravidian throne, had consciously kept away from Hindu bashing; in fact, he has moved closer to the faithful, cultivating an image of a tolerant even approving contrarian.

Even during the peak of his anti-Hindu tirades, Karunanidhi had taken matters of HR&CE seriously. A case in point is his 1982 padayatra from Madurai to Tiruchendur demanding a transparent investigation into the death of Subramania Pillai, a HR&CE official. Then chief minister MGR maintained that Pillai had killed himself; Karunanidhi said he was murdered for trying to expose embezzlement of funds at the Tiruchendur temple. Sensing a groundswell as Karunanidhi walked and talked, MGR ordered an investigation by retired judge C J R Paul. When the government refused to make public the probe report, Karunanidhi managed to get a copy and told reporters that the panel had found that Pillai did not die by suicide.

DMK 2.0s focus on HR&CE is more conspicuous. In the past three months, the government has reclaimed from encroachers, temple land worth `641 crore; it plans to retrieve more temple properties worth `1,000 crore. And now, by ordering renovation of old temples and appointing non-brahmin and women archakas who would also chant Tamil mantras, the government is trying to be a facilitator of casteless Hindu religious practices.

This is so tactfully done as to not be perceived as anti-brahmin, but more as a process of democratising temples. Thus, schools and colleges would come up on retrieved temple land. More thoughtful are plans to have libraries (at the Chidambaram Nataraja temple, refer texts on Suta Samhita about dancing Siva or Sangam literature on temple architecture) and old-age homes attached to temples (being by the gods in the twilight years must be a soothing thought for the deserted and the destitute).

This also shows how the DMK has graduated from soft-pedalling on rationalism to revving up on participative secularism. While the strategy is aimed at eating into the AIADMKs constituencies among practising Hindus something that J Jayalalithaa, a pious Hindu, so effortlessly won over it also seeks to neutralise the designs of the BJP, which is hoping to occupy the space that its companion of convenience may vacate sooner than later.

The days of atheism as a political slogan are over. If you disagree, here is Charles Darwin for you: The true atheist will stay silent. To give a theist someone to debate is to harbour his delusion further.

Views expressed above are the author's own.

END OF ARTICLE

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Sambavami yuge yuge: How DMK is the new guardian angel of Hindus - The Times of India Blog

ChennaiA memorial will be built in honour of social reformer Ayothidasa Pandithar (1845-1914), chief minister M K Stalin announced on Friday in the Tamil Nadu assembly

By Press Trust of India

PUBLISHED ON SEP 04, 2021 01:25 AM IST

Chennai

A memorial will be built in honour of social reformer Ayothidasa Pandithar (1845-1914), chief minister M K Stalin announced on Friday in the Tamil Nadu assembly.

Reformist leader Thanthai Periyar had hailed Pandithar as a pioneer in social reforms and rationalism, the chief minister said and recalled the quote of the 19th century reformist that divisions like caste and religion were the stumbling blocks to Indias progress.

Pandithar was a writer, researcher, historian, doctor, orator and in essence a multi-faceted personality, the CM said in a statement in the House.

In Tamil Nadu, no one could do politics without using the words Tamilan and Dravidam (Tamilian and the Dravidian land) and it was Pandithar who changed these two words into an idea that defined the political landscape of the region, he added.

The reformer used these words as a weapon of wisdom and Tamil Nadu politics continued to function in the path shown by him, Stalin said.

In commemoration of the 175th (birth) anniversary of Pandithar and in his honour a manimandapam would be built in North Chennai, he said.

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Memorial will be built in honour of Ayothidasa Pandithar: Stalin - Hindustan Times

Identity politics has been weaponised to sow division across the Western world.

Global outrage over the killing of George Floyd by a white policeman in America last year has been harnessed by activist groups such as Black Lives Matter to support demands for social and political upheaval that go way beyond making racial equality a reality.

Identity politics is not just about countering the long record of oppression that black people in America have experienced from the white majority who first enslaved them, then after emancipation denied them basic civil rights, and who continue to impose injustices of varying degrees of severity on them even now. It, and especially its weapon of seeking to close down freedom of expression, is now being harnessed by minority groups of all descriptions around the world, and sometimes with far less cause than that of those who straightforwardly protest that police officers should not kill their black fellow citizens even those they have a legitimate reason to arrest with impunity.

This has led to the weaponisation of identity politics across much of the Western world, causing rancour, division and distrust in societies with white majorities and ethnic minorities.

When identity politics is used as weapon, society becomes vulnerable to its deployment by those whose agenda is to undermine interests they deem to have power (whether political, social or financial) that is denied to the minority and deemed to be used against their interests. Any attempt by political, social or financial elites to play identity politics would attract either ridicule or hostility: these are not sections of society that naturally attract the public compassion or sympathy that elevates a cause to a point where orthodox political power has to recognise its significance. These powerful elites are precisely those that minorities, and those who purport to speak for minorities, claim have been stacking the odds against them for generations, even centuries.

Much of the power of identity politics is to make normally rational people who consider themselves part of an oppressor majority behave in an irrational and self-hating way.

They do this in order to distance themselves from appalling behaviour that it would never occur to them to engage in, but also for fear of being seen not to conform and thereby attract public condemnation.

The latter is in especially plentiful supply thanks to social media, which itself generally bypasses rationalism and reasoned debate, and whips up hostility against those who do not conform to the ideals or standards dictated by the mob.

This threatens freedom of speech and the marketplace of ideas in free and liberal societies.

Simon Heffer is Professor of Modern British History at the University of Buckingham. A columnist for theDailyandSunday Telegraph, and author of the just-released Centre for Independent Studies paper, The Threat of Identity Politics.

Original post:

Identity politics is a threat to societies - The Spectator Australia

FEATURES The Mystery of Cyber-Occult Maestro Henry Kawahara By Patrick St. Michel September 02, 2021

Unlike other new age CDs that are all about healing and relaxation, Henry Kawaharas working concept was about the altered states and cybernetics caused by drugs, and the sound is unlike anything else on other releases from that time, says music journalist Yuji Shibasaki, who wrote a profile on EM Recordss latest compilation Cybernetic Defiance and Orgasm: The Essential Henry Kawaharafor the Japanese publication TURN last July.

Born Yoshifumi Kawahara in the Western city of Fukuoka, the artist who eventually took Henry on as his stage name grew up in Japan during a time when the country was experiencing an occult boom of sorts. From my personal experience in the late 70s, occult material was invading magazines, books, manga, art, and all other forms of mass media, says EM Records label owner Koki Emura. In the West, the term occult usually refers to the paranormal; the Japanese version was more concerned withas Emura writes in the compilations liner notesthe sense of things hidden or secret, beyond common sense and rationalism.

Helping propagate this idea was Sugen Takeda, the owner of Hachiman Publishing, one of the premier sources for occult literature from the 1980s onwards. In an essay referenced in Emuras notes, Takeda says, the occult is a form of counterculture based on profound criticisms and questioning of Western rationalism which sprang from people who had witnessed or experienced the death of the so-called grand narrative.

Just as important, though, was the fact that Hachiman Publishing had acquired the trademark and license to sell the 3D acoustic technology called Holophonics in Japan. Created by Hugo Zuccarelli in 1980, Holophonics captured life-like recordings bordering on the unsettling when you listened to it through headphones. Think of it like ASMR, but more likely to unnerve than relax.

At some point, Kawahara came across a Holophonics cassette, and would eventually contact Takeda. He told Hachimans owner that he had started experimenting with his own 3D recordings. Takeda already had a sense that sound would play a large role in his business moving ahead, and was also observing how the then-fledgling internet was offering the same kind of transcendental opportunity that the occult offered. That sparked the idea of the cyber-occult, which blended supernatural spirituality with futuristic technology. Hachiman began releasing music utilizing the new technology, including Kawaharas own 3D sound system, as a way to help listeners go beyond the rational. Most of this cyber-occult music could only be bought in bookstores or through mail-order services, and they were categorized with ISBN codes typically used for books. This partially explains why Kawahara and the cyber-occult has existed in obscuritymusic fans couldnt find it.

Kawaharas music exemplified this underground scene. His work wasnt designed to simply drift into the background. Instead, Kawahara wanted to draw specific reactions from the brain, like replicating brain wave patterns during sex on Sound LSD: Subliminal Sex (the album notes indicate that the producer was mentally affected by the music). The album titles spelled out their aims: Out Of Body Experience, Fantasy Enhancer, The Sound Of Illusions. At the same time Kawahara was releasing these CDs, he was also working with fellow artist Keisuke Oki as Digital Therapy Institute to create the Brainwave Rider.

Emura first reached out to Kawahara about 10 years ago in an effort to archive his music. He remembers Kawahara (then living in Cambodia) being hesitant to the project at first, but he was swayed by Emuras vision nonetheless; their relationship established, the two began mapping out what would become Cybernetic Defiance. Then, sadly, Kawahara passed away in 2012.

The most horrifying practice of record companies is the memorial release, where death is converted into commercialism, Emura says. He wanted Kawaharas music to be in the spotlight on its own merits, without a cloud of sadness hanging above it. As a result, the compilation wasnt released until now, nearly a decade after his death.

Because Kawahara passed before Emura could interview him, the artists process remains shrouded in mystery. So Emura found another angle through which to contextualize the music, framing Kawaharas unique sound through the lens of Japans cultural ecosystem in the late 80s and early 90s. The liner notes for Cybernetic Defiance touch on the trends in spirituality and technology that were happening concurrent to Kawaharas output. (Emura also published a deep dive into this time period, written in Japanese.) The atmosphere that fostered Kawaharas electronic music is vital, elevating it above just being another obscure example of Japanese ambient, or somehow adjacent to the Pure Moods brand of new age music.

On Cybernetic Defiance, sonic elements criss-cross audio channels, and Holophonic recordings of water, voices, and dolphins creep into Kawaharas music. Sound LSD #.SS05/7.83HZ (Radio Mix) swirls together electronics and disembodied vocal samples, while the mix of Children In The Museum included here creates an unsettling environment out of clanging bells. Where other new age or healing music from the time was softer and more restorative, Kawahara often explored the darker side of this realm. But he also could make music like Steven Halpern, says Emura. It could feel schizophrenic.

Part of Cybernetic Defiances success lays in showcasing how often Kawahara modified his sound over time. Destination Of Endorphins comes from a dolphin-centric mid-90s release Kawahara designed for the Stargazer, a brain machine Kawahara helped make for Hachiman. Even without the LED-blinking device, the track shows the playful side of Kawaharas sound design. Then theres the stretch in the middle of the compilation that highlights his interest in Southeast Asia, a recurring theme in his original work reminiscent of Haruomi Hosonos experiments in reverse exotica in the 1970s.

The music can be beautiful, but theres lots of melodies where you arent sure which country or tribe it originates from, Emura says. The border is ambiguous, unstable, unnatural, and spooky at the same time. He thinks this is one of the things that sets Kawahara apart from American artist Jon Hassell, to whom the Japanese artist is often compared. Hassell developed a sonic fantasy world with elements of Asian music, but he comes from a strong Western background. Kawahara, meanwhile, existed in the world he was creating, and rather than treat it as exotic, he could approach it from a more detached place. His fictional world is unstable and uncomfortable. The closest point of comparison, he says, would be the legendary visual artist Takashi Murakami, whose animated works similarly reject Western conventions in pursuit of the surreal.

Kawahara stepped away from music in 1996 for reasons that remain unclear, though Emura is on the case: as of this writing, hes working on an in-depth essay looking at the environment that prompted Kawahara to stop creating. Cybernetic Defiance is by no means a definitive chronicle of Kawaharas artistry or legacy, which will most likely remain shrouded in mystery for years to come. Emura plays up this lack of closure in conversation, teasing, This compilation has a big secret Ive never told anyone. One day, Ill reveal it. Please listen again and again until then. The open-endedness serves as an invitation to explore a moment in Japanese pop culture long overlooked, and thanks to Kawahara, a gateway to the beyond.

The rest is here:

The Mystery of Cyber-Occult Maestro Henry Kawahara - bandcamp.com

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NOTE: This post was contributed by Gregory S. Paul, who is an occasional contributor to Free Inquiry,and who published an important article called Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies. Here is how Michael Shermer summarized that article:

Is religion a necessary component of social health? The data are conflicting. On the one hand, in a 2005 study published in theJournal of Religion & SocietyCross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democraciesindependent scholar Gregory S. Paul found an inverse correlation between religiosity (measured by belief in God, biblical literalism, and frequency of prayer and service attendance) and societal health (measured by rates of homicide, childhood mortality, life expectancy, sexually transmitted diseases, and teen abortions and pregnancies) in 18 developed democracies. In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD [sexually transmitted disease] infection rates, teen pregnancy, and abortion in the prosperous democracies, Paul found. Indeed, the U.S. scores the highest in religiosity and the highest (by far) in homicides, STDs, abortions and teen pregnancies.

from Bowling for God by Michael Shermerin Scientific American on December 1, 2006

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I was watching Bill MahersReal Time on 8/27 when I realized that prominent hard right-wing evangelical political operative Ralph (Christian Coalition) Reed, who Maher seems to like, was trying to profoundly mislead viewers about the level of religious practice in this country. I am not sure how prevalent his misuse of survey data is among theoconservatives a web search did not find anything but he managed to slip a bogus item of information out to the few million who seeReal Time every week. So I am sending this out in an effort to try to nip this theocon anti-fact in the bud. Plus this scientist is annoyed by the slick pols brazen yet sly misuse of statistics.

Reed used the classic tactic of lying by telling the truth while leaving out the pile of contrary data that shows he is lying. First, he acknowledged that rates of nonreligion are indeed rapidly expanding in these United States as church membership and attendance decline with amazing speed after a slow decline from the 1950s Gallup has recorded a membership decline of about 70% at the turn of the century to under 50% these days (https://news.gallup.com/poll/341963/church-membership-falls-below-majority-first-time.aspx), in line with other surveys as well as reports of closing churches. The seemingly reasonable Reed then offered the logical explanation that the general societal detachment of people from social groups, driven in part by digital media, has something to do with that. Reed then began his verge off into misinformation land when he said all that did not matter all that much because rates of belief in and worship of God remain persistently high because people are becoming increasingly private about it.

Here is where being truthful can be a lie. Reed correctly claimed that in 1990 Gallup asked respondents if they pray often, sometimes, hardly ever, or only in times of crisis, or never.

Before proceeding, we need a digression about the statistical and other requirements of competent polling. Particularly regarding longitudinal surveys that track levels of and changes in opinions and practices over time. First, such polls must be sufficiently quantitative to give meaningful results that can be compared over the years. In the 1990 poll Gallup blew it the only quantitatively reasonably useful possible answers were hardly ever or never. As for often and sometimes those values are pretty much useless. How often is often? How sometimes is sometimes? Each respondent would have a different notion on that, and will inevitably respond in inconsistent ways. Gallup should have known better and never posed such an ambiguous query. And to track changes the same questions need to be asked every one or a few years to generate an opinion level timeline. Its basic stuff.

In 1990 half of respondents told Gallup they pray often. Which other than telling us what we already know that lots of Americans are religious has no scientific value. What they should have asked was something along the lines of do you pray multiple times a day, once a day, a few times a week, once a week, once a month or so you get the statistical drift. I mean really, what were they thinking over at Gallup? Demographic dolts. Fortunately, Gallup then did not repeat the query, possibly and hopefully because they did a demographic dope slap and realized their error and good statistical riddance, since asking it again would risk giving misleading longitudinal results.

Alas, apparently inspired by the pandemic, in 2020 a Gallup that again should have known better did ask the same dam bogus query. And lo and behold now 55% say they pray often. Reed used this one pair of statistically valueless figures to try to sell Maher and his audience a demographic bill of goods that Amerotheism is not really in decline after all. Bill, and his other guest, understandably not being up on the minutia of recent Gallup results, were not able to perceive or counter Reeds clever deception (I had to look it up and see what was really going down myself, even though this is an area of my research for an extensive 2019 analysis of the subject discussed here and beyond seehttp://americanhumanist.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/art-1-Paul-The-Great-and-Amazingly-Rapid-Secularization-of-the-Increasingly-Proevolution-United-States.pdf).

The degree to which Reed was being deliberately deceptive by selectively picking Gallup data, or did not realize or understand the critical caveats and contra stats, I do not know for certain but am very suspicious. In any case, he was grossly misinforming Real Timewatchers one way or another.

First, Gallup itself admits that their little trend line on prayer is not statistically meaningful (https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/309638/update-virtual-worship-during-covid.aspx), which Reed did not mention saying that would have negated his claim right there on the air. Obviously.

And here is what Reed did not offer up because it directly disproves his propaganda line that American God belief and worship is not in decline. In a location where Gallup offers up the useless prayer result they also present a number of more properly posed and frequently repeated polls they have been executing and posting for decades. Ones that do a much better job telling us what is really happening in this country a/theism wise (https://news.gallup.com/poll/1690/religion.aspx). So how about lets check those fascinating and very telling stats out

Those who say that religion is very important in their life went from, well lets see here, ~60 in the 1990s to under 50% these days in a nice, fairly steady downslope (as also is true of the rest of the results). Meanwhile, those who say theism is not very important rose greatly from 10-15% to a quarter (see below discussion on why levels of rationalism measured in polls are probably on the low side). Gosh, Ralph, you did not bring up that one on Real Time.Because you are too lazy and ill-informed to know it which seems a stretch since it is right there on the web? Or because you knew it would blow your superficially clever lie out of the water?

How about this one. Back in the 1990s, almost two-thirds told the fine folks at Gallup that religion can answer all or most of todays problems. Now it is heading toward and below half. The rationalists who think religion is largely old-fashioned and out of date? Rose like yeast dough from one-fifth to over a third of the respondents (check out season 1, episode 25 of I Love Lucy fora classic laugh on that bread baking item).

Heres a good one that shows that the days in which the hardcore devout religious right that Reed is a leading fellow traveler of was doing pretty good, while it was the mealy mushy mainline faiths that were taking it on the demographic chin, are no longer operative. In the 2000s those saying they were born-again or evangelical were in the broad area of the lower 40s percentage-wise (which was a little above the values observed in the 1990s). Now is in the mid-30s, hello Ralph. Might you mention that next time you are on the telly?

Next up is an oldie but goodie. In the 70s one in four thought the Bible is literally true. Now its a quarter or so. So are those who are of the opinion that the Bible is supernaturalistic fantasy mixed with some history, which is impressive because those good people were a mere one in ten back when Jimmy and Ronnie were POTUS. And while support for the creation of humans by God has been slipping, support for evolutionary science is on the way up. Sorry Ken Ham, Philip Johnson, and Michael Behe.

Time for the BIGGIE. One Mr. Reed somehow again failed to chat about as he misled Bill on his own show. Convinced God exists? In 2005 80%. In 2017 64%. A decline of a sixth of the national population in a dozen years. How about God probably does not exist or convinced there is not one. Doubled from 7% in 2005 to 13% in 2017.And if the fast-shifting trendlines have continued since then, probably still lower for the first and higher for the second here in 2021. But wait, there are more godly Gallup longitudinal deity queries. From 2001 to 2016 God belief sank from nine in ten to eight in ten, those who dont opt for the supernatural rose to over one in ten. Gallups venerable simplistic yes or no on God belief question got virtually all to say yes in the 1950s and 60s, and after a yawning data gap has shown no results similar to the above surveys in the last decade. This is a good place to explain that it is well documented that persons are often reluctant to say they hold an unpopular opinion even when doing so privately by phone or online. A technical effort to use standard sociodemographic techniques to correct for this factor estimates that American atheists as broadly defined make up a quarter of the population (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/05/170516143411.htm), matching or outnumbering a number of major religious sects. Likewise, other studies indicate actual church attendance is about half that claimed to Gallup (and other pollsters). It follows that all the Gallup (and other pollsters) results for not praying, thinking religion is not societally important, attending church, are not Born-Again, thinking the Bible is not the word of God, understanding we are big-brained apes, are nonreligious, etc., are very probably markedly higher than Gallup, Pew, Harris, GSS, WVS, et al. results seem to indicate.

Gallup points out something interesting. One of their queries indicates that the number of Americans who think religion is having a major influence on America is currently on the high side. But they point out that is directly contrary to their own measures showing the opposite is true

(https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/310397/religion-paradox.aspx). So what gives? Although the query has its uses, it is not a direct measure of how much influence religion is actually having on America, which is not practical to measure, one would think, but what people thinkit is having. Which may well not be the same thing. That is why, unlike most longitudinal questions, over time the results for this query have fluctuated wildly. Apparently, the rise of the hard right under the aegis of secular hedonist Trump, which has had a strong evangelical component to it, has caused many to presume that religion has revived as a major influencer. Which it has not because even among Republicans theism is on the decline (https://www.pewforum.org/2019/10/17/in-u-s-decline-of-christianity-continues-at-rapid-pace).

So. Only one very unreliable Gallup result that the organization itself does not take all that seriously seems to support political operator Ralph Reeds patently absurd pretension that polls show that Americans are remaining privately as Godly as ever over time, despite fleeing institutionalized religion. That when all of the more scientifically constructed and frequently asked Gallup queries show that while organized Christianity is declining faster than personal theism, the latter is going down fast too. One can and probably should presume that a data cherry-picking Reed knew that. Such is common among theists its called lying for the church (or mosque or whatever; a young Muslim initially pretending to be uncertain about his beliefs showed up at a local atheist meetup not long ago and proceeded to try to convince the women to convert by quoting inane Quran lines ad nauseam). And if per chance he did not he has not the slightest excuse for not knowing the real and easy to find facts. Ergo, Godly, Born-Again evangelical Reed profoundly lied either deliberately or out of gross negligence and ignorance to a national audience.

The dire demographic reality is a big factor behind the push by many theoconservatives to rule this republic via minority votes at the presidential and Senate and state levels, and by packing the Supreme Court. What they should do is use persuasion via free speech to try to get the American majority to go along with their conservative supernaturalistic ways. But that effort has been failing big time for decades with no realistic hope for success. So they are trying to capture the government by electoral hook and crook and use sheer political power to remake America into the kind of right-wing Christian land this nation was back when the government was a bastion of traditionalist values. Remember Comstock Laws? They bemoan the onset of the unprecedented cultural and sexual revolutions of the 1900s that are helping drive the withering of theism. And thats why the right continues to embrace a chronically dishonest and irreligious Trump who in turn depends on the religious right for the political success he has enjoyed. That makes twisted electoral sense since Trump lost the electoral college by just 45,000 votes in three states interestingly, I have not found evidence that Reed has either supported or rejected the claim that Trump did not lose in 2020, seems he is trying to avoid entirely ruining his credibility with either side.

So how about it Ralph? Will you publicly and prominently retract your claims and acknowledge that Americans have become markedly less Godly over recent decades? And apologize to the host of the show you with your boyish grin tried to snooker?

Got to say, I am not holding my breath on that.

But you should.

Now, being a data-following scientist who really does my best to be objective which is why I am not a theist I note that the PRRI has released new results that while confirming the broader trends of recent decades, suggest that the deChristianization of the US may be plateauing out (https://www.prri.org/research/2020-census-of-american-religion). That is possible, but looking at their rather internally contradictory data I am not convinced. All the more so because the PRRI results do not look to be in line with those of other organizations. So we shall have to see over the coming years what the assorted surveys turn up and go from there.

And Bill. When you have Reed, and others of his ilk, on your program in the future and they make one of those that sounds kinda dubious claims, do one of your classic yeah like I (dont) believe that one looks, and warn your audience to take what they just heard with a large load of salt. Really large.

You have to watch out for those theocons. They can be sneaky.

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Ralph Reed Tries to Pull the Wool Over Our Eyes - Patheos