Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2021 July 9

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July 9

Large differences in religiosity rates of neighbouring countries

I was surprised to read on irreligion the large differences in percentage of population who are nonreligious, e.g. Czech Republic, 75% vs Slovakia, 23% or Uruguay, 47% vs Paraguay, 2%. I can understand when one country has a communist history and not the other e.g. Vietnam, 63% vs Cambodia, < 1%, but what about the other examples? Thanks, cmɢʟee⎆τaʟκ 18:20, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

If you think Cambodia didn't have a communist government, you might want to read about a particularly nasty fellow named Pol Pot. DOR (HK) (talk) 18:47, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

There are likely to be many confounding variables such as urbanization and GDP per capita. --Amble (talk) 19:15, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

The list at Irreligion uses quite disparate sources, which in similar cases is rarely a good idea. List of countries by irreligion uses a better approach. Paraguay isn't present, Uruguay has a smaller figure. The differences between Czech Republic and Slovakia are less marked, but still noticeable. Personuser (talk) 19:50, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

Good point – I forgot about Pol Pot. cmɢʟee⎆τaʟκ 06:59, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

Check out Irreligion in Canada or Irreligion in the United States to see how far the populace swings even within countries. As others pointed out you can correlate the cross-province/state levels of irreligion with urbanization, gdp, education, historical local religion, political affiliation, and country of origin of local population. Of 19 (talk) 20:14, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

Cmglee -- One big historical difference between the Czech Republic and Poland (I don't know much about Slovakia), is that in Poland the Catholic Church served as a kind of refuge for Polish nationalism, while the Czechs chose a religion other than Roman Catholicism on three separate historical occasions (Eastern Orthodoxy under Great Moravia in the 9th century, heterodox Catholicism under the Hussites in the 15th century, and Protestantism under the "Winter King" in the 17th century), and on each occasion, Roman Catholicism was basically (re)imposed by German military might. I don't know how often modern Czechs think about any of those incidents, but they've taken their toll in different attitudes toward the Catholic Church in the Czech Republic vs. Poland... AnonMoos (talk) 23:57, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

Some explanation at Catholic Church in the Czech Republic#History... AnonMoos (talk) 23:47, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

• Also how do you define religiosity? For instance, in the last UK census (2011), 59% of people ticked Christian (this is expected to be significantly lower for this years census). However, if you actually look at regular church attendance, that is way lower (this survey puts it at 5% in 2015). Of course, church attendance is also a flexible term, but by any measure it'll be lower than the census figure. There would be a number of reasons for this, there is the concept of a "cultural Christian", and the phenomenon of people having their children baptised and nominally be part of a church to get into better schools for instance. This is all a long-winded way of saying that it depends on what you classify as religious, and different countries will likely be using different measures, leading to perhaps unexpected results. Fgf10 (talk) 00:03, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

As already touched on earlier, such measures are inevitably inaccurate. Different countries use different ways of determining how many people follow religion there. I truly wish Wikipedia was more discerning in reporting on such matters. HiLo48 (talk) 00:06, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

The table in the Irreligion article, ranking countries by 'Percentage of population who are nonreligious' is WP:OR. It collects together disparate data from multiple sources to arrive at a conclusion (the ranking) not given in any single source. Such WP:OR is extremely common in lists and tables on Wikipedia, though getting people to admit there is a problem, let alone do anything about it, is probably a lost cause. AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:48, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

That is not necessarily OR, see WP:CALC which states that "Comparisons of statistics present particular difficulties. Editors should not compare statistics from sources that use different methodologies," implying that comparing statistics from sources that use the same methodology is not OR. Zoozaz1 talk 03:07, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

So, what methodology was used to collect the data used in that table? AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:58, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

I replaced the table at irreligion with an excerpt from List of countries by irreligion. The matter was mentioned on the talk page on the ground of content forking, the best place to discuss details is probably Talk:List of countries by irreligion. Personuser (talk) 14:47, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

It's still completely unreliable data. And wanting people to discuss it at what must be a rarely looked at article seems to be sweeping the broader problem under the rug. HiLo48 (talk) 22:49, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

The other table at least makes an attempt and gives some cautionary advices, and would make a better starting point for answering this question. My intention was mainly to avoid confusion and scattered discussion about details of this particular table, not to dismiss general discussion about the reliability of data on religion or the poor quality of many wikipedia lists, though I see how my comment could be seen this way and thank you for pointing that out. The older list was just so awful I couldn't stand it. Personuser (talk) 23:49, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

Well, actually on the other list Zuckerman seems to be the only one interested more in sociology than marketing. Personuser (talk) 02:41, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, everyone. My take from it is that the data is from disparate sources which use different measures and thus cannot be directly compared, I suppose like populations of largest cities. cmɢʟee⎆τaʟκ 07:03, 12 July 2021 (UTC)