mormonsandscience

I think one possible factor is our strong commitments to the church made right at college age. We go on missions, get married and make very strong covenants and commitments to God and the church often times while getting a college education. Those commitments, over and above most other Christian religions, have to have an effect on religiosity and how one handles apparent inconsistencies discovered through education. You might say the average Mormon college graduate is more invested in their religion making it harder to turn away.

I remember this study on Mormons when it first came out. Does anyone know whether those results have been replicated by other studies since then, or whether the trends have changed among subsequent co-horts? Also, my recollection is the religiosity increased among Mormon men from college to grad school, but decreased among Mormon women.

Looking at the traits measured by the two graphs, it is clear that these are two separate studies, using separate indicators to measure "religiosity".

It is therefore probably not the best science to compare the two.

I am suspicous of studies showing a negative correlation between education and religous devotion. It just does not correlate with my personal experience, with friends inside or outside the Church.

The one study that I am most familiar with was conducted in Great Britain, which is as anomolous in its proportion of self-described agnostics/atheists as the U.S. is in its proportion of believers.

Another possibility is that if you don't pay tithing, you are "unworthy". People who have less education, are more likely to be financially stressed, and thus less likely to pay tithing. "Unworthiness" affects their spiritual self-esteem and often their social standing (as if poverty weren't hard enough already), so they would be more likely to leave. Perhaps careful analysis of data would allow this hypothesis to be tested.

Paul,

That is an interesting hypothesis. Here is how I would set up the analysis to answer that question, assuming the data meet the requirements:

A regression analysis with
- religiosity as the outcome variable
- education as the main predictor
- tithing and financial stress as covariates.

This would give us a look at the influence of education while controlling for tithe paying and monetary stress.

Lowell,

The data can be viewed in Albrecht & Heaton's "Secularization, Higher Education and Religiosity", published in LDS Social Life: Social Research on the LDS Church and its Members, edited by James Duke (Provo, UT: BYU Religious Studies Center, 1998), 293-314

or by simply going to http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/cdm4/document.php?CISOROOT=/rsc&CISOPTR=1464&REC=1

Dave C:

Nice post. Sorry I missed this one for so long.

Interestingly, you and I would disagree on where some of the inconsistencies exist. But, such disagreements only make the process more fun.

We should not be bothered that problems exist. They always exist. There are significant problems in Mormon history; evolutionary science; general theology; and philosophy. Such is life.

During my middle school and half way through high school I didn't' really bother to read my scriptures. But thats probably cause I was into drugs at the time. My parents had enrolled me in to a new school <a href="http://www.answers.com/topic/west-ridge-academy">west ridge academy in utah.</a> They helped in encouraging me in reading my scriptures more. Even in college it became a addict to read it as well as reference.