jim clark <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>I'm probably not being very clear about my point. Here goes one
>more try. Religiousness (i.e., L vs. H religiosity) shows no
>family effect. But more specific religious affiliations,
>including presumably such irreligious classifications as agnostic
>and atheist, do appear to show family effects. These two
>observations strike me as inconsistent because the H religious
>groups would include the religious affiliations (i.e., Baptist,
>Roman Catholic,...), whereas the L religious groups would include
>the irreligious affiliations (i.e., agnostic, atheist, ...). So
>we have something like the following two columns:
>
> Col 1 Col 2
> Low Relig atheist, agnostic, ...
> High Relig baptist, catholic, protestant, ...
>
>Col 1 shows no family effect, whereas Col 2 does (an assumption
>on my part). In other words, is it possible for families to
>determine specific religious affiliations (including the
>non-religious categories) without having any relationship with
>overall religiousness? The lack of relationship in Col 1 would
>seem to require that it is irrelevant to your religiousness
>whether your parents were baptists or atheists.
>
Of course we do not know if there is a family effect for specific religious
affiliations, but I am willing to posit that for the sake of argument. Even
within the same religion, however, people can differ in religiosity. My
grandparents and my parents profess(ed) the same religion. But, while my
grandparents were quite orthodox and strict in their observance, my parents
were much less so, my sister still less so and me even less. Thus, while we
might all say we belong to the religion of our parents, we do not share the
same religiousness. I assume that this same situation is possible for other
religions. Your specific religion may be identified, most often, as the
religion of you parents (although I do know lots of people for whom this is
not true). but you level of religious belief and experience might be more
influenced by others in your environment, assuming you do not live with your
parents. Whether or not it works the same for atheists I do not know but
there are so few avowed atheists and agnostics, at least in the US, that I
do not think they would influence any analysis.
If my conjectures are true, then it seems possible to have to have a family
effect for denomination but not one for religiousness.
JeffNagelbush
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Ferris State University
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