Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2017 November 30

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November 30

Why does Uruguay have a high percentage of irreligious people compared to its neighbors?

I've read the article on Religion in Uruguay, and checked other websites such as Reddit, Quora, and Stack Exchange, but while they all mention that Uruguay has a large irreligious population, they do not detail why. What are the historical and cultural reasons for Uruguay's situation? Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 00:55, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

I think you'll find your answer at Uruguay#Religion. It's quite interesting. Surtsicna (talk) 01:15, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

Other factors could be that Uruguay is a small fairly urbanized and relatively prosperous country without large concentrations of poverty or recent major instability.

I find it interesting that one major reason why there are a lot more non-religious people in the Czech republic than in Poland is that in Poland the Catholic church was identified with Polish national aspirations, while in Bohemia-Moravia the Catholic church was more or less imposed on the population by means of Germanic military might three times (Great Moravia, Hussite Wars, Winter King), old historical episodes which still seem to have some impact today. AnonMoos (talk) 09:56, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

Other factors could have to do with the way that people respond to surveys in Uruguay compared to other countries, or with the way Uruguayans express their religious outlook (which is different from the outlook itself) compared to other countries. There are many reasons why a survey result should be different between two different places, and surveys themselves are notoriously hard to produce consistent, unbiased results. Wikipedia has an article about this, response bias, which is a good start, but it only touches on some of the deep issues with self-reported survey data which would lead to this information. --Jayron32 12:08, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

Jayron your answers seem irrelevant, as they ignore the history of Uruguay and the presence of organized religions in the area, with data on their adherents. The data is not only based on self-reporting. Dimadick (talk) 19:01, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

No, they are relevant because they provide a reasonable explanation for the data, or at least some of it. Bias in self-reported data is a known problem, and to present explanations of data of this nature while ignoring this factor is folly. My answer was fully relevant because it's a factor in the data which should not be ignored.--Jayron32 16:18, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

To quote our article on the subject: "Uruguay's secularization began with the relatively minor role of the church in the colonial era, compared with other parts of the Spanish Empire. The small numbers of Uruguay's indigenous peoples and their fierce resistance to proselytism reduced the influence of the ecclesiastical authorities."

A country where Christianity never had much of an influence, ends up as the most secular state in the Americas. Dimadick (talk) 18:56, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

Life estates

If Fred grants Alice an estate that expires when Bob dies, it's a life estate for the life of another. If Alice grants Bob an estate that expires when Bob dies, it's an ordinary life estate. But what if Fred grants Alice and Bob an estate that expires when both grantees are dead? In other words, when Alice dies, Bob has a life estate, or when Bob dies, Alice has a life estate, but Fred doesn't get the property back until both Alice and Bob are dead. What do you call that? A life estate with concurrency? Nyttend (talk) 19:54, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

In before someone complains about legal advice. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 21:08, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

They're joint life tenants, and the arrangement is joint life tenancy. (Reference is any google search for the phrase, but e.g. here). Henry^Flower 21:17, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

Is the answer the same for all legal systems? Common law, civil law, Sharia law, others? 73.110.38.83 (talk) 23:34, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

I'm looking at common (Pennsylvania), but I didn't specifying, because the intro to the article made me believe that life estates are found only in common-law systems. At least in Louisiana, there's no concept of a life estate (they use a usufruct), but I don't know about other non-common-law jurisdictions. Nyttend (talk) 03:56, 1 December 2017 (UTC)