Sociology of religion

[Rhysmike]

An academic exploration of why we do what we do:
https://academic.oup.com/socrel/article/80/1/28/5036084?login=false

 

[Robertb345]

Wow, what a great paper. Helps me classify and categorize my own view of why I'm going and what I expect.
The following quote:
"The accounts of the pilgrims’ expectations and experiences confirm the subtle
but clear presence of a self-transcendent element in atheists’ motivations to walk
the Santiago way." ,
Made me recall the various versions of this comic.

So while I might not understand all the specific in the analysis, I found it insightful and funny.

 

[Becky 59]

Thanks for posting!

 

[JabbaPapa]

Interesting.

Though ...

"This Medieval Christian pilgrimage route has been revived and recreated in the last 30 years"

No, the revival started in the 1965 Holy Year.

"Second, it measures motivation with a single item instead of a reliable scale"

This is spot on though !!

Except that "religious and atheist individuals" is unfortunately just as reductionist.

"the psychological literature on the motivational aspects of religiosity and to the emerging literature on atheism"

Here too is a methodological bias.

Why not a question of "the psychological literature on the motivational aspects of ... atheism" ?

And this is pure nonsense : "Compared to the religious, there is evidence that atheists are more open to experience, less dogmatic, favor analytic thinking styles over intuitions, demonstrate lower social conformity"

If intellectual bias is a basis of your "study", you make it worthless.

"Another area of overlap between atheists and the religious can be found in their shared sense of appreciation for ritual"

Ritual as such is intrinsically religious in nature, so that I'm unsure what this means.

the profile of a “ritual atheist-agnostic”

Another error in basic concepts -- an agnostic is not an atheist. The whole concept of this "profile" is absurd. Looks frankly like projection.

"the awe-deprived rationality of an atheistic worldview"

And yet he claims that it involves "transcendence".

"phenomenologically similar experiences while framing their underlying ontology differently"

And this is just postmodernist word-salad.

Underlying ontology must by necessity be unique, not multiple choice. Else it's just worldview, and not ontological. This is "my truth" stuff.

"Horizontal forms of transcendence are purely naturalistic in their orientations as opposed to vertical forms, which take the supernatural as their key dimension"

This is a false statement, and directly antithetical to the very purpose and nature of pilgrimage as such.

The Way of Saint James is precisely horizontal, and yet its orientation is in the Spirit, and not in this person's imaginary "pure" naturalism.


---

I'll stop here, except to say that this is a clumsy attempt to try and redefine the religious and the spiritual into atheistic requirements.

---

And to say that it is with very good reason that we refrain from discussing religion in these forums.

 

[JabbaPapa]

Though honestly, this :

https://academic.oup.com/view-large/129701227

is deeply incoherent with most research, and is loud in cognitive bias.

It attempts to redefine the Camino as being in toto about some atheistic notions of religion versus atheism, with zero consideration towards such common goals, regardless worldview, as health, culture, sport, tourism, and so on. Or even just gastronomy, habit, curiosity -- or just plain old fun !!

The paper is worthless from its intrinsic presumption and blinkeredness.

 

[Hiking Joe]

Interesting.

Though ...

"This Medieval Christian pilgrimage route has been revived and recreated in the last 30 years"

No, the revival started in the 1965 Holy Year.

"Second, it measures motivation with a single item instead of a reliable scale"

This is spot on though !!

Except that "religious and atheist individuals" is unfortunately just as reductionist.

"the psychological literature on the motivational aspects of religiosity and to the emerging literature on atheism"

Here too is a methodological bias.

Why not a question of "the psychological literature on the motivational aspects of ... atheism" ?

And this is pure nonsense : "Compared to the religious, there is evidence that atheists are more open to experience, less dogmatic, favor analytic thinking styles over intuitions, demonstrate lower social conformity"

If intellectual bias is a basis of your "study", you make it worthless.

"Another area of overlap between atheists and the religious can be found in their shared sense of appreciation for ritual"

Ritual as such is intrinsically religious in nature, so that I'm unsure what this means.

the profile of a “ritual atheist-agnostic”

Another error in basic concepts -- an agnostic is not an atheist. The whole concept of this "profile" is absurd. Looks frankly like projection.

"the awe-deprived rationality of an atheistic worldview"

And yet he claims that it involves "transcendence".

"phenomenologically similar experiences while framing their underlying ontology differently"

And this is just postmodernist word-salad.

Underlying ontology must by necessity be unique, not multiple choice. Else it's just worldview, and not ontological. This is "my truth" stuff.

"Horizontal forms of transcendence are purely naturalistic in their orientations as opposed to vertical forms, which take the supernatural as their key dimension"

This is a false statement, and directly antithetical to the very purpose and nature of pilgrimage as such.

The Way of Saint James is precisely horizontal, and yet its orientation is in the Spirit, and not in this person's imaginary "pure" naturalism.


---

I'll stop here, except to say that this is a clumsy attempt to try and redefine the religious and the spiritual into atheistic requirements.

---

And to say that it is with very good reason that we refrain from discussing religion in these forums.

Would it not be, the rest and peace of mind, like mindfullness, meditation, religion,...
Could it not be the same we seek and find through different means.

I know I kick the religion here, but even in religion the different "all mighty" , pilgrimage or/and meditation/praying is common.
Just pointing to the deeper meaning.

Even for the atheist it will be/is a profound experience. Is it not ?

Let me leave it at this....

 

[JabbaPapa]

mindfullness, meditation, religion

I'm very happy to discuss such concepts with other pilgrims out in these silly Ways of Saint James, but in here, such discussions never proceed nor end well.

 

[JabbaPapa]

"We included three items with the purpose of controlling for physical exertion and emotional factors that could influence participants’ motivations and affect. These included the number of days the individual had walked at the time of filling in the survey, the expected number of days from beginning to end"

Wow.

I wonder what they would have made of my recent 373 day Camino ?

Also, they clearly do not understand what affect is in in French literary theory, where the notion comes from. I *think* it's Foucauldian, though it could just as easily be Genette.

In any case, it involves not motivation, but a dynamic interplay between interpretation and intellect.

Trying to "control" that interplay is, again, cognitive bias, and shoddy methodology.

Ironically, such cognitive bias is the very thing that affect concerns -- so that a proper interpretative approach towards affect would be to at least attempt to overcome it in oneself, instead of using one's own half-understood version of it to exclude any narratives incoherent with one's "atheism versus religion" bias.

 

[JabbaPapa]

"69 had missing data in only one subscale. To retain the remainder of their data, missing values were imputed in the original scale items using the mean of their respective group"

Powerful stuff.

If you didn't give an answer, we'll invent one for you.

 

[JabbaPapa]

I keep on trying to stop, but I just can't ...

The whole paper is just too full of too many absolute howlers !!

atheists by definition are not religious in any vertically transcendent sense

So they don't understand the word transcendent either.

If something can be defined as being vertical or horizontal, then by very definition it is not "transcendent".

If it can be defined in such terms of dimensionality, then it is immanent.

The transcendent by definition is unbound by any such category.

"The way to Santiago is no longer exclusive to Catholic pilgrims"

Never has been.

 

[VNwalking]

The paper is worthless from its intrinsic presumption and blinkeredness.

The whole paper is just too full of too many absolute howlers !!

If you can do better, why not do another study yourself to address all these issues, and write it up?
And then let the authors of this one have a crack at it.

 

[Robertb345]

Well easier to read the abstract to get the gist of it:

Title: "Atheists on the Santiago Way: Examining Motivations to Go On Pilgrimage"
Abstract:
"In the past 30 years, the camino to Santiago de Compostela has been recreated as an eclectic pilgrimage, open to both religious and atheist travelers. Following previous work on motivational orientations and religion, we conducted a study examining atheist versus religious pilgrims’ motivations to walk the Santiago way. We assessed pilgrims (N = 360) at various parts of the northern Spanish camino using a questionnaire that measured motivations to go on pilgrimage. In addition, we measured levels of positive and negative affect, physical exertion, and emotional problems. Atheists scored significantly lower on community and religious types of motivations. However, in several measures no differences were found between groups. We suggest that both atheist and religious pilgrims are exploring forms of horizontal and vertical transcendence characterized by a desire to connect to nature and one’s deeper self."

The suggestion in the last sentence I found rather nice, that we all go for similar motivations. Given a sample size of N=360, I'm sure there will be many other views, but still statistically a good portion of commonality.

 

[RRat]

An academic exploration of why we do what we do:
https://academic.oup.com/socrel/article/80/1/28/5036084?login=false

I like to walk. And the cafe con leche is an added plus.