Are mass shootings on the rise because young men no longer believe in hell?

According to Steve Sailer, the mass shootings committed by disciplined, skilled killers are on the rise because fewer young men fear there is a hell waiting for them. Do the data support this? 

The General Social Survey asked respondents, "Do you believe in hell?" I lumped those who answered "definitely yes" and "probably yes" into one group, and the same for the no's. Here are the results for men ages 18-29:

The percent not believing in hell bounces around a little 1991-2008, but it jumps up to 47% in 2018.  

Here is a graph of the trend in high body count mass shootings in America--the type usually committed by the kind of men Steve is talking about:

The rate accelerates around the same time we see a jump in skepticism about hell. 

What is the profile of a scientifically knowledgeable person?

Scientific progress is crucial for the problems we humans face, but what types of people know science the best?

The General Social Survey (GSS) asked respondents 12 basic science questions. A random example is, does the father determine the sex of the child? One problem with the list of questions is that they are a bit too easy; the mean number correct is 9.5.

Shown below are OLS standardized coefficient for a number of factors I thought might predict scores on this science quiz (sample size = 203):

Standardized OLS regression coefficients

Male  .09
Age   .01
Black   -.19**
Other race   .00
Years of education   .32***
Believe in God   -.19**
Church attendance   -.07
Political conservatism  -.06

**p < .01, ***p < .001, two-tail test

According to the results, basic scientific knowledge is predicted significantly by being white; having more education; and being skeptical about the existence of God. The other variables are not predictive.

But you might be thinking, hey, this is a HBD blog--where's IQ?  Well, I wanted to throw it in last to see how it changes things:

Standardized OLS regression coefficients--IQ added to model

IQ   .35***
Male  .20
Age   -.10
Black   .08
Other race   .04
Years of education   .08
Believe in God   -.33**
Church attendance   -.04
Political conservatism   -.01

**p < .01, ***p < .001, two-tail test


Education and being black drop to non-significance when IQ is added to the equation.  In other words, the reason why more education people know more science is because they are smarter, not because they were exposed to more information than less educated people, and blacks score lower because they are, on average, less intelligent.

By contrast, skepticism about God strongly predicts scientific knowledge even after taking IQ into account. This suggests that, at least under current conditions, skeptics take to science more than believers, even after controlling for differences in IQ.

UPDATE:  I discovered that fewer people were asked the last science question, so I dropped it to get the sample size up to 1,039--much bigger. Here are results for the final model:

Standardized OLS regression coefficients--IQ added to model

IQ   .29***
Male  .14**
Age   -.02
Black   -.12***
Other race   -.03
Years of education   .22***
Believe in God   -.16***
Church attendance   -.12***
Political conservatism   -.07*

*p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001, two-tail test

We now have the statistical power to see smaller effects.  IQ still dominates the model, but now we see that the following traits predict knowledge: male, white, more education, disbelief, not attending church, and liberal political orientation.

After IQ, education is most important, followed by skepticism, gender, race, attendance, and political orientation. Keep in mind that these factors matter even after taking IQ into account. For example, and man whose IQ is the same as a woman's is likely to know more science than she does.

Which is a stronger predictor of belief in God: lower IQ or feeling like you don't have control over your life?

With the rise of militant, celebrity atheists, quite a bit of attention has been devoted to data that show that atheists tend to be smarter than theists.  Race realists are likely to rely on IQ to explain the greater religiosity of blacks and Hispanics.

I can think of another factor that might help explain these patterns: having a sense of control over one's fate, called locus of control by psychologists. As a religious person myself, I see that some people get interested in religion when they feel helpless. They turn to God when there is trouble they can't seem to handle. Many of my irreligious colleagues seem very in charge of their lives; they've got it all under control.

I've also read research that indicates that poor minorities tend to feel that they do not control their life outcomes. This is called an external locus of control. Maybe this sense of vulnerability explains their stronger belief in God.

The General Social Survey asked respondents, "Do you agree or disagree with the following: We each make our own fate." Answers ranged from "strongly agree" (1) to "strongly disagree" (5).

They were also asked about their confidence in the existence of God with responses ranging from "don't believe" (1) to "know God really exists and have no doubts about it" (6). As a first step, let's use OLS regression analysis to see if race is linked to belief in God and locus of control (sample size = 741):

Confidence in the existence of God (standardized OLS coefficients)
Black   .13***

Hispanics did not differ from whites significantly in belief in God, so we'll focus on blacks. They have greater confidence in God's existence.


External locus of control
Black   .06**

Compared to non-blacks, blacks are more likely to think they do not make their own fate. Now let's look at race, IQ, and belief.


Confidence in the existence of God
IQ   -.16***

As expected, we see IQ is associated with more doubting, but the correlation is weak.


Confidence in the existence of God
Black   .10***
IQ   -.14***

Recall how the black estimate for belief was .13 when only race was entered into the model. We see that when IQ is added, the black coefficient shrinks but does not disappear. This indicates that some of the greater belief by blacks is explained in terms of lower IQ, but much of the gap remains unexplained. Let's add locus of control:

Confidence in the existence of God
Black   .00
IQ   -.14***
External locus of control  .18***

When external locus of control is added, the race coefficient drops to zero. Much of the reason why blacks are more likely to believe in God is because of a sense of helplessness.  And when it comes to predicting belief, an external locus of control is more powerful than IQ.

This is a reminder than while HBD-ers are right to focus on intelligence, there are other consequential traits. Moreover, there is evidence that locus of control, like practically all psychological traits, is genetically influenced. According to this twin study, about 1/3 of the variation of a sense of control over your own life is due to genes.

Smart people are more varied than other people

I showed in an earlier post that, according to the General Social Survey (GSS), the smartest category of people are also the most diverse in terms of income.  Some smart folks are very rich, some are very poor.  They are all over the map.  Nicholas Taleb takes advantage of the wide income dispersion among the intelligent in order to make IQ look like it cannot predict income among smart people and thus is a worthless concept.

If he were biased against the concept of social class like he is against IQ, he could use the same tactic: According to GSS data, the correlation between father's education and offspring income is a paltry .13, and the standard deviation (sd) for people with the most educated dads is $42,000, while it is only $33,000 for those with dads who only finished high school.  For non-nerds who don't know stats, sd is a measure of how spread out the scores are for a sample of people, in this case, individual incomes. 

Turns out, people in the smartest category are diverse on many variables, not just income.  I'll give you the sd for the middle and highest IQ categories to show what I mean.


Standard deviation for average intelligence people and those in the smartest category

Education
Middle IQ  2.4
Top IQ  2.5

Job Prestige
Middle IQ  12.6
Top IQ  14.4

Political Orientation
Middle IQ  1.3
Top IQ  1.6

Church Attendance
Middle IQ  2.7
Top IQ  2.8

Confidence in the Existence of God
Middle IQ  1.3
Top IQ  1.7

In every case, intelligent folks are more diverse than ordinary people.  Compared to the middle, smart people are simply all over the place in terms of education, job prestige, politics (higher scores mean more conservative), church attendance, and belief in God.  Humans beings are so complicated, it's hard to predict which box a person will fall into, and it's even harder when the person is very smart.

This reminds me of the argument that Michael Levin made in Why Race Matters that, because whites are more intelligent, on average, than blacks, they have greater free will, and thus perhaps greater responsibility for their actions.

(You might argue that the sd is higher for smart people simply because their means are higher, thus one can expect the sd's to also be larger. Actually, the means for political orientation, church attendance, and confidence in God are lower for the smart group.)

UPDATE:  I am also reminded of what is said about Jews, a famously smart group:  two Jews, three opinions.

Data: What predicts skepticism about God best--scientific knowledge, IQ, or education?

Many 19th century thinkers believed that religion would gradually wither away as industrialization and scientific knowledge spread.  Religious belief has proven to be more stubborn than they thought, perhaps because they didn't realize that it has a genetic component, but how much of an antagonism do we see nowadays between science and belief?

The General Social Survey (GSS) asks people how much confidence they have in the existence of God with answers ranging from "don't believe" to "know there is a God."  The survey also asked ten questions that tap scientific knowledge.  I added up the correct answers and estimated the relationship between the this and belief with OLS regression (N = 4,542), and the unstandardied coefficient is -.195.  Standardized is -.265.  In plain English, scientific knowledge predicts skepticism with some accuracy.

Is this link due simply to IQ?  In other words, do smart people seek out scientific knowledge and at the same time come to look on the existence of God with skepticism?  The answer is, not really. When I add IQ to the model, it does significantly predict skepticism, but the effect is weak (beta = -.051) and the coefficient for scientific knowledge only drops a little from -.195 to -.187. 

How about education? People learn more science as they get educated, and perhaps school teaches skepticism about God. When I add years of education to the model, it is related to more skepticism only weakly (beta = -.052), and the science coefficient only drops from -.187 to -.178.  By the way, the effect of IQ on skepticism falls to non-significance with the addition of education to the model.  In other words, IQ is unrelated to skepticism when you take educational level into account. 

So, when you consider knowledge of science, IQ, and education, the factor that really seems to matter for belief is science.  (Of course, causal direction is not clear here. Religious people may tend to stay away from science since they sense it is antagonistic to their beliefs.)

Data: People who waiver in their belief in God have the lowest self-esteem

Over the years, I've done a number of analyses that indicate that the psychologically most healthy people are both atheists and people who know God exists. The groups in the middle who are uncertain about God are, for example, less happy and are more likely to drink too much.

General Social Survey participants were asked how often did they feel worthless in the past 30 days.
Answers ranged from "all of the time" (1) to "none of the time" (5). Here are the means for a sample of 1,218 people:

Mean self-esteem score

Don't believe  4.88
No way to know  4.49
Some Higher Power  4.57
Believes sometimes  4.09
Believes but doubts  4.55
Knows Gods exist  4.63

Atheists have the highest mean, while confident believers come in second. At the absolute bottom are those who believe sometimes. This group is one standard deviation lower than atheists, which in English means a huge difference.

This is the pattern we've seen previously. The confident on either side are psychologically better off than those in the squishy middle. Personality might explain this. Decisive, confident people trust their abilities, and if they take a position on God, dammit they know they're right.

People who frequently doubt themselves also doubt their beliefs. One's uncertainty about oneself seems to go hand-in-hand with uncertainty about everything else.  

Also--these results contradict the view that atheists will have a low view of themselves because they are likely to believe they are the accidental product of natural forces, not the children of God. Personality seems to be much more important than people realize.  Self-esteem seems to be in your brain, not your beliefs.

An increase in skepticism among young people?

I've been distributing a questionnaire to students which, among other things, asks them their religion. Quite a few have answered "atheist" which makes me wonder if skepticism is on the increase among young people. It would not surprise me, given the success of New Atheists like Richard Dawkins.

The General Social Survey has been asking about belief in God most survey years since 1988. Here are the percentages for men and women ages 18-29 for the 90s and the past decade:

Percent skeptical--1990s

Men (n = 470)
Atheist 4.9
Agnostic 7.7

Women (n = 571)
Atheist 2.5
Agnostic 3.9


Past decade

Men (n = 644)
Atheist 5.3
Agnostic 10.2

Women (n = 824)
Atheist 1.6
Agnostic 5.3

All categories appear to have increased except for female atheists.

Belief in God and drug use

TGGP asked about the relationship between belief in God and use of illicit drugs. Based on GSS data:

Percent who have used illegal drugs in the past year (sample size = 885)

Doesn't believe 13.6
No way to find out 9.5
Some higher power 4.7
Believes sometimes 6.7
Believes but doubts 1.8
Knows God exists 2.2
 
Compared to believers, atheists are six times as likely to have used drugs. (There are only 22 atheists in the sample, so the difference is not statistically significant. If we calculate the chi-square for the overall relationship between belief and drug use, it is statistically significant.) 
 

He is that which is not contingent

I'm traveling and have not had opportunities to post. I wanted to do an amusing post on racial differences in attitudes toward which race is sexually most well-endowed, but technical problems are delaying that a bit.

Allow me instead to talk about something that requires no data and which is far removed from sexual endowment.

In response to the claim that God explains the existence of the universe, atheists like to ask "But who made God?" This question misses the point. The universe and everything in it is contingent: It exists, but it could not exist. In fact, it seems more likely that nothing would exist. Nothing is simpler than something. Anything that is contingent requires a cause for its existing rather than not existing. The contingent universe requires a necessary entity to explain it. By necessary, we mean that which is not contingent; that which does not rely on something else for its existence. We call the entity which causes the contingent universe to be, God. He was not created and could not possibly be created. To ask where He came from is to not understand what He is by definition.  

Decline in confidence that God exists

Once every two years the Inductivist gets giddy with excitement when the new GSS comes out. As a first plunge into the new data, let's look at trends in confidence in the existence of God.

The shrinking purple section (if I were a girl, I'd know the precise name for that color) indicates that "knowing that God exists" has been on the decrease over the past decade. On the other hand, I wouldn't make any long-term predictions. Most of the experts sixty years ago predicted the imminent death of religion.

St. Augustine on God

One of my favorite arguments for the existence of God was developed by St. Augustine. It goes like this: Mathematical and geometric truths, like the Pythagorean Theorem for example, exist even if no human mind ever thought them. So they are not reducible to human mind or brain. Using another example, the interior angles of different triangles always add up to the same number of degrees even if there had never been a single human to discover or know that. But they are abstractions and are immaterial and mind-like phenomena, so it is difficult to conceive of them existing independently of minds as in Plato's world of Forms. Their nature requires they reside in an eternal mind, and that is God.

Religiosity and credulity

Among people, there runs a continuum with skepticism on one end and religiousness/credulity on the other, right?

A study is described in What Americans Really Believe by sociologist Rodney Stark that asked people if they agree with the following statements:

1. Dreams sometimes foretell the future or reveal hidden truths.
2. Ancient advanced civilizations, such as Atlantis, once existed.
3. Places can be haunted.
4. It is possible to influence the physical world through the mind alone.
5. Some UFOs are probably spaceships from other worlds.
6. It is possible to communicate with the dead.
7. Creatures such as Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster will one day be discovered by science.
8. Astrology impacts one's life and personality.
9. Astrologers, palm readers, tarot-card readers, fortune-tellers, and psychics can foresee the future.

An index was created from the answers. Thirty-one percent of people who never attend church scored high; only 8 percent who go to church more than once a week scored high on the index. The difference is statistically significant. So the continuum goes from a tendency to be skeptical about church to a tendency to be skeptical about the occult and the paranormal. The group that is skeptical across the board is a small minority.

More than one-half of atheists are dumb

Richard Dawkins thinks atheists should be renamed "brights." The problem is that, according to the GSS, 56.8 percent of American atheists have IQs below 100. The percent for agnostics is 38.9. I'm sure that many of my readers won't believe it, so go to this website, type "god" in the column field and "IQ" in the row field, then hit the "Run the Table" button. Then just add up the column percentages.

But those of you who know there is a God, don't start getting cocky: 64.1 % of your comrades are stupid (IQ < 100).

Atheism not spreading

After months of therapy, I am finally able to return to John Derbyshire's We are Doomed (buy it, bitches) to test one of his ideas. He contends that 9/11 has unleased an atheist movement which some nominal believers have responded to affirmatively. 

So is the number of atheists growing? According to the GSS, the answer so far is no. Taking the six surveys between 1988 and 2000 that ask about belief in God (N = 8,027), 2.5 percent of Americans do not believe there is a God. For the two post-9/11 surveys--2006 and 2008 (N = 4,971)--2.5 percent are atheists. Holding steady.  

Predictors of childlessness

I looked at over 5,000 respondents from the GSS to estimate a model that predict the odds of having at least one child. Here are the results (logistic regression coefficients):


Having at least one child

Age .05 
IQ -.05
Years of education -.15
Income .00
Belief in God .15
Political conservatism .08

All of the relationships are statistically significant at the 95 percent confidence level (two-tailed test). The estimates depend on the scale of the predictor: the income coefficient is so small, for example, because income varies so widely. Income is actually a comparatively strong predictor of not being childless, as is age (not surprisingly). Education is also a strong predictor of having no kids. IQ is weaker. Belief in God is a strong predictor the other way, while conservatism is a weaker predictor.

Long story short: being an educated liberal atheist is like having a disease where your testicles rot and fall off.  

And you develop this mysterious desire to get a dog or a cat.

Nihilism is associated with not knowing there is a God

General Social Survey respondents were asked: "Do you agree or disagree that life does not serve any purpose." Answers ranged from "strongly agree" (5) to "strongly disagree" (1). Here are the means by belief in God:


Mean nihilism score (N = 3,708)

Does not believe in God 1.68
There is no way to find out 1.75*
There is some higher power 1.72*
Believes sometimes 1.89*
Believes but doubts 1.62*
Knows there is a God 1.48

*significantly more nihilistic than those who know there is a God


All of the groups except atheists are significantly more nihilistic than those who know there is a God. (The sample size for the atheists is small).  The largest gap, that between knowers and those who believe sometimes, is half of a standard deviation--a fairly large difference.

Religion and trust

N = 8,866

N = 4,612


In What's So Great about Christianity?, Dinesh D'souza claims that religion makes people more trusting. Trust is an important ingredient in a well-functioning society. There's has been a lot of discussion in the Steveosphere about how diversity undermines trust in your neighbors, even among members of the same ethnic group.

The General Social Survey offers little evidence for D'souza's contention. In the top graph, you do get a little bump among people who attend church nearly every week or more frequently, but the lower graph on belief in a deity shows that those who know God exists are the least trusting category.

I'll have to look at it, but I doubt there is a positive cross-national correlation between religiosity and trust.


UPDATE: According to this study of 105 countries, religiosity is negatively correlated with trust.

IQ, belief in God, and fertility

In the post where I showed that IQ is unrelated to church attendance, readers suggested that a negative correlation would be found between IQ and belief in God.  I looked at the question some time ago, but should do a test for statistical significance.  The above table shows the mean correct score on the vocabulary test (WORDSUM) by belief in God. As before, agnostics are the smartest group among whites, and are significantly smarter than believers. The same can be said of those who "believe in a higher power" and those who "believe but have doubts." Atheists are not significantly smarter--they probably would be if their sample were bigger. Among blacks, the "believes in a higher power" group has the highest mean but the difference is not statistically significant.

Turning to the fertility question, I divided respondents into a dull group and a bright group based on their Wordsum score, and I limited the sample to people between the ages of 45 and 69 who participated in the survey since 1990. I made these choices to maximize the sample, but to focus on people old enough to have had all their children and who composed more recent cohorts. I also merged the atheist and agnostic categories to maximize cell size.

Among the dull group, believing in some higher power or believing with doubts is associated with having fewer children. "Knowers" and atheists/agnostics do not differ significantly in their fertility.

This changes, however, among the bright sample. Atheists, agnostics, and those who believe in some higher power have significantly fewer children than knowers.

So knowledge of God does not appear to increase fertility among the dull, as Jewish Atheist argued, but belief in God specifically (as opposed to some "higher power") might  increase fertility among the intelligent.

Darwin, God, and politics: I see that the HBD-ers and social conservatives are currently duking it out. Since I consider myself to be both, I suppose I should punch myself in the face.

It seems to me that what is essential for a viable political movement is that it tells a persuasive, coherent story to a large segment of the population. I say coherent, but I didn't say something that was so internally tight, it must have been developed by Aristotle. Conservatism, I don't think, has ever claimed such internal consistency. It's more like a stance.

We can't all be Burkes. Someone needs to do the market research: I volunteer. This time around, let's look at the two Men who people seem to be siding with: God or Darwin. A movement needs to either: 1) favor a thing; 2) oppose it; or 3) shut up about it. The data indicate that in America, on the question of Darwin and God, it's probably best to shut up about both of them, but if we need someone to rally around, just make sure he's not Nietzsche.

In 2000, 1,023 Americans (GSS) were asked: 1) their confidence in the existence of God; and 2) how true is the statement that humans evolved from animals. Here are the top ten most common combinations of answers:


Percent of all respondents

1. Knows God exists--Evolution definitely not true 33.0
2. Knows God exists--Evolution probably true 14.7
3. Knows God exists--Evolution probably not true 11.5
4. Believes but doubts--Evolution probably true 7.7
5. Knows God exists--Evolution definitely true 5.8
6. Believes but doubts--Evolution probably not true 4.1
7. Some higher power--Evolution probably true 3.7
8. Believes but doubts--Evolution definitely true 2.9
9. Some higher power--Evolution definitely true 2.5
10. No way to know--Evolution definitely true 2.0
10. Doesn't believe in God--Evolution definitely true 2.0


Any American who likes to push atheism or likes to criticize believers must enjoy having no political voice whatsoever.

People are divided, on the other hand, when it comes to evolution. It's not popular with most people--my students think the whole thing stinks, as much as I push it--and it's especially unpopular among folks on the Right. On the other hand, it's intellectually satisfying to smart people.

So what's the solution? It looks to me like the only realistic way to go is for conservative elites to inform their worldview by sneaking peaks at HBD stuff when no one is looking, but they will have to fashion their ideas in a way that appeals to the common man. Does that sound like lying? Of course it does because that's what politics is, or haven't you noticed?

Another reason to have a family: It's a smart crowd that visits Inductivist, so I'm sure you guys have thought about this before, but I have to make the case anyway.

Many readers are atheists, and I, myself, have to make the case to you for having children? A Christian like myself hopes for existence beyond the grave. If I have no kids, so what, I will never end.

Many of you respect evolution and genes as well. Nature says if you don't have kids, you basically missed the point. You are a big, fat loser. You crossed the finish line last. In my view, it's not completely inaccurate to say you are your genes. (My pro-life position probably has something to do with this view). An endless chain of ancestors got you here, and you're okay being the loser who brings that awesome success to a pathetic end?

I've got a bunch of little Rons running around (God help us). They might not be able to continue the ancient chain, but they have a better chance than your non-existent kids. It's the closest you're going to get to immortality, unless you're Isaac Newton or George Washington. And sad as it is, most of us ain't Newton or Washington.

Now, some of you might not care in the least about your ancestors or immortaility. Understood. But let me make one more pitch, even though it will probably fail to move your type as well. You are capable, talented folks. Your community, your country needs the kinds of kids you would raise. In these selfish times where duty means little, this argument will sound pathetic, but I'm making it anyway. Who's going to run America in the future: your kids or those of your high-school dropout neighbor?

And for those of you who do believe in life after death, I'm probably preaching to the choir about having a family, but you simply do not know you will exist beyond death. Any thoughtful person recognizes they could be wrong on this. So hedge your bet, and if it turns out that you're nothing more than lunch for worms, well, the family goes on.

Also--encourage your relatives to have kids. You should be making my arguments to them. Even if I was childless, I have twelve nieces and nephews and dozens of cousins. Think of yourself as one element of the clan, and how the clan might go on indefinitely. It might not work for you, but I like the thought.