We'll often ask for data to support some of the arguments that we make because data is our friend, right, I mean, we can rely on the data. We can rely on the statistics to make a valid argument, or can we We're not so sure after hearing this story, and Aji is here to take us through it.
Sociology professor Philip Truscott of Southern Baptist University recently published an article in the Journal of Sociology and Christianity that was titled Great Suicide and the Rise of the Religious Nuns. In this study, he failed to use the scientific method properly and stwaight up goes from correlation to causation, claiming that the file of religious belief is the cause of
the rise in sexual abuse crimes and suicide weights. This story is from The Friendly Atheist by Hermann Meta on January fifteenth, twenty twenty five.
Yeah, The Friendly Atheists.
We always love having a clip by Hemmitt Meta on here. You know, great show brings up a lot of good points and this one is no different. We have a professionally trained sociologist and alleged professor who is making claims about information that really isn't supported by evidence. Maybe supported, but that depends on how you skew the data. And so, Jonathan, I wanted to get your take on how this data is being used.
Can we trust it? What's the deal here?
Oh, you can't trust it at all? Actually I agree. Hannett did sum it up nicely, as did the sociologist. Ryan Craigan told the author that this was shoddy argument and that he could play the exact same game in the other direction if he wanted to be as careless as trust Scott by linking gun violence to evangelical christian The FBI uses the UCI, which is a Universal Crime Index for data. And I look data a little bit, and even the data he's showing doesn't show what he's
he's using, doesn't show what he thinks it does. So I think this is really a failure of him to understand the graphs. And anybody who looks at those graphs would say they don't fit the curves that he's saying they do. So, you know, like one of them is a straight line up and then there's the other ones. The line that crosses it. You know, it's like, so it crosses in one point. Lots of stats do that, you know, it doesn't mean there's anything to do with
one another. So well, you know, it's just again causation, and and you know, correlation, correlations don't even correlate.
I want to push back a little bit on what you said though. Okay, so you said you think he fails to understand the data. I mean, is that really the case? Do you think he fails to understand You think he's being disingenuous? That's number one, And number two, you said anybody who looks at the data can see
that it's incorrect. Well, is that also the case? I mean, isn't he placating a demographic of supporters right or of maybe right wing people who want to see the data skewed, who take comfort in the data being skewed.
I mean, what is it that.
A little bit more likely that he's being intentional?
Okay, I'm not sure if he's being intentional or if he but in a sense, he probably is because he shopped around to find the publication that would publish it, and he finally found a Christian publication that would publish it, but nobody else would touch it with a ten foot
poll because it was absolutely false. So you know, and that is what's frustrating about this is that the journalistic integrity of a professional journal was violated by this thing, and that so anything that comes out of that journal again, I would not even take a first glance at, not even that, but the idea that these most people who look at a graph like that, unless they've had statistics or they've had math matics mass of some sort, would would understand the graph at least at a basic level
and be able to see that. However, Yeah, if you don't have that education, you're not going to see that. A matter of fact, you probably wouldn't even looking at the graphs. You'd be you know, looking at the words and picking out the words that you understood and forgetting the rest.
Well, that's right, And I want to go back to my point because I think I think that you know, you have to go to a Christian journal, and you know, I hate to paint all Christians with a broad brush, but I think largely you fall into that cheap mentality when you're willing to believe some of these asenin concepts that go along with Christianity, and you're willing if you're willing to believe, you know, the person with the book you're probably willing to believe the person with the quote
unquote data, where I think a lot of the people that are like minded with this professor probably fall and so aj you know, I want to pivot to you. You had some remarks about this data to get your interpretation of.
That, I'm going to say that I agree with you. I think the data was not necessarily or technically incorrect. That you can look at the numbers and see that they were there were correct numbers on there all right, like how many suicides and how many ways and how
many religious nones. Those numbers were right, but when you put them together is the wrong interpretation, which I'm not surprised by, given that there are so many different biblical interpretations, right, so they're like kind of a pro at interpreting things differently in their unique ways. But if you look at these graphics, for example, showing the increase of their non religious self reporting, this was actually it's kind of is
an increase, but the curve is hardly going up. It's almost it's almost flat, very very steady going up, all right, It's minimal. But this is because the percentage of nons religious nuns has moved on average about two percent per year since about nineteen forties, and these studies that he looked at were up to twenty twenty three, So this is around seventy five years or so. Whereas the suicide weight has gone from two percent to twenty five percent
in only ten years. It's a huge increase compared to their religious increase, right, So half of that increase happened in the years following two hundred and sixteen. You know, take from that whatever you will. Twenty sixteen it was very specificaliar so the national suicide weight dropped by half two years later, and then it went back up in twenty twenty. Like there are specific events that happened worldwide
or nationwide that can affect those suicide weights. People are affected by whatever is going on around them in society. So it isn't a surprise that these numbers weren't up and down, whereas the religion numbers just kind of steadily went up.
Yeah, and so I think that data can really be skewed.
And and by the way, the author of this Hemnitt Meta did a really good job of kind of breaking down some of the things that we that we you know, looked over or that the publisher looked over. But data can be skewed if you're willing to ignore all sorts of other data. Right, So they the author, excuse me, not the author of this article, but the sociologist that we're talking about, states that you know, as people identify as non religious nuns or atheist or or not identifying
with a religion, sexual assault goes up. But you know, at that same time, society has changed so much that sexual assault reporting has actually increased. It's not that sexual assault has changed, it's that we now live in a society, especially on college campuses, that champion people coming forward.
Right.
And so another thing that I think we need to highlight is that these.
Reports are coming from college campuses.
You can't take, as he meta points out, you can't take reporting coming from college campuses and represent the entire country just based on college campuses.
That doesn't translate.
And so you're ignoring a whole sector of many sectors of our society that have other reporting rates that are not being factored in. So that is something that this person when publishing their article. And forgive me, I keep forgetting their names. So it's truscott. I keep calling him, this person, this sociologist or whatever. Trustcott, you know, deliberately, I think ignores things to make his case easier. So I did the same thing. So I want to I want to tell you what I was able to find out.
Okay, So in.
Twenty fourteen, five out of one thousand people identified as transgender, and in twenty twenty three, nine out of one thousand people identified as transgender. Okay, that's an eighty nine percent increase. At the same time, in twenty fourteen to twenty twenty three, there was a ninety three percent increase of sea level rise. So therefore, transgender people are clearly responsible for sea levels rising.
I mean, that's I just proved it.
And not only that, but with sea levels rising, that means that the ice caps are melting, So transgender people must be responsible for the ice caps melting. And with the ice caps melting, there are more countries in the Arctic that are trying to drill and trying to put military bases there. That must be the fault of people identifying as transgender as well.
Right, that's ridiculous.
That's ridiculous, and that's what trust Scott is doing. And so yeah, you know, Jonathan, I want to turn back to you, is this, how does this affect the right wing agenda? That's that's kind of what I want to get at here, because I interpret this as being yet another way of a right wing agenda coming out and demonizing people. Just like we talked about on Monday. Here we have another way that this is happening. I wanted to get your thoughts on that.
One of the things about the right is that when they do this sort of thing, what they're doing in their objective is to demonize and to tear apart people, and this is just another way they can do that. They can say all these woke people are doing these horrible things. They take that summation, and now all they
have to do is control the narrative. If this gets out well a sociologist says that these people are responsible for this, or they have a higher rate of it, then they can understand that they have to run back to the church and fill those empty seats that have been getting more and more empty every year, so they can get their money, so they can buy a watch that they want to buy that's referencing something we did on Nonprovins last year, or they can get a new
Cadillac or their third airplane. You know, they can't do that with no butts in the seat, right. So that's what they're trying to do is get people to be afraid of anybody who isn't Christian or isn't religious, because those people are going to be your biggest nightmare if they move in next to you. The problem is, of course, that's all not true. Matter of fact, the opposite is true. If you want to find somebody who's going to rape somebody, go to your local church and look at the youth
pastor or the pastor. There are more Christian pastors in jail for that kind of thing than there is any other small subset of the population. Taking a population of a university studies that the FBI actually admits that there's somewhat of a skew because a lot of the sexual assault information comes from universities. They're the ones who generally are required to report it more so in that case, and also the stigma against reporting is still a big
deal in most people. People who are immigrants, or if they happen to be, I don't like calling me illegal here without visas. They don't want to have anything to do with the police. That's right, So they're not going to report problems they have. That's right, and you know that is a issue.
That's right, that's right.
And and what you bring up as far as the immigrants, that in itself is kind of a compartmentalized piece of the bigger picture when it comes to people reporting and women in general. That what what immigrants are dealing with right now is absolutely horrible.
But when it.
Comes to reporting in general, you know, it turns out that out of the female population, about one quarter of them represent or one quarter of them report or or a test that they have been sexually assaulted in some way, right, But out of all all women that are sexually assaulted,
only eighty percent of them actually reported. So the reason, and I say that, it's because you know, this data is taken from people who are willing to disclose that they were they were assaulted, they just never reported it, you know, officially, right, So we know that out of everybody, uh, you know, not everybody's reporting. And and that has changed, that has changed. But you know, I want to I want to pivot to AJ and get your take on that.
You know, why why is reporting so important to this story and so important to uh what we're hearing from trust God.
One thing I wanted to point out is that the colleges that he specifically took this data from were religious colleges, and religious colleges have a lower reporting wage than non religious colleges. We know that because women feel like they are going to be you know, looked down on, or you know, because they had sex people marriage, right, they could be they there could be punishment for that, for
doing something that is breaking their religious dogma. So I think that just that fact alone is something that that completely disqualifies this other, this study or whatever he called it, from being any type of legitimacy. Okay, so he just picked in twos what negative correlations he wanted to make, instead of considering that there were any other possibilities for the race, the rise of rape rates or suicide rates
or whatever. You know, he's claiming that again going back to the religious dogma, claiming that alcohol or drugs is something that makes atheists commit crimes. It's like, you know, the God of the gaps by for negative behavior, and it's just like I see somebody sitting and therefore adealism must be up the cause.
Yeah, you know there's other there's something else. Well, you, first of all, excellent point. Excellent point, because, yeah, these statistics are coming from sectors of society where women are subjugated, they are held down.
Right, their word.
Isn't important, right, it doesn't mean as much as it should in these kind of religious corners, these ultra religious and ultra Christian owners of our society. You know, we we know that by by looking at the Bible. Women are supposed to be subservient. Women are supposed to be silent. You grow up with that as a woman, and then you go to an institution as a woman that frowns upon you speaking up, frowns upon you advocating for yourself, you're more likely to not come forward.
I am happy to say that.
Those numbers are up, but they're still not at one hundred percent. And to mis use that data to represent all of society again, we are we are ignoring a larger part of the problem. And some of that problem that I want to talk about is that you know, only forty three percent of men report, and I think that that number is probably much higher than it should be, or excuse me, that number is much higher than that of reporting.
Jonathan, from your perspective, you.
Know, as a man, as a member of the LGBTQ community, how does this demonization of atheists of nuns strike you when when it comes to considering that, you know, men go through these traumas too, it.
Strikes me, like, you know, and here, I don't think that there's any way that you can tell you can tell somebody in the.
Queer community that men don't get rape. It happens. Is it common? No, it does happen. And when it does happen, you hear it in the news. Immediately if somebody you know, does something like murder somebody after doing it, that it gets all the press in the world because they want to demonize everybody in the queer community for having one
or two people done. That reporting is probably more accurate than it would be for a woman, because a woman is programmed from birth, if she's a Christian or another or Islamist or even a Hindu, to not say anything because if she does, there are repercussions to that. Well, men like me, I would probably say something and everybody would laugh at me. You know, well you're queer.
Uh yeah, well you're also what you get You're also you know, a veteran, a big burly dude that could handle himself. But you know, everybody can be vulnerable. You know, everybody can be a.
Victim, and that's important to remember.
And I want to harkem and can commit rape by the way, just so you know it has happened.
It's not common, but it has happened.
I want to Yeah, go ahead, go ahead.
I wanted to just mention one thing that the suicide rates are up among veterans, extremely high right now, and I just wanted to give a shout out to the various organizations that are working very hard to stem that tide too. And brothers, we're here, we got we're going to try and take care of you as best we can.
And sisters too, let's not forget and sisters too. Yeah, I appreciate that.
You know.
I I lost somebody I was deployed with to suicide, and so that strikes home. We had family a family member also take their life, not a service member, but still, you know, and let me let me just let me just highlight that. Yeah, but you know what for people that go through that to see this ugly, ugly reporting, right, it's not a game, it's not a joke.
And this person should really be.
I'm glad that other journals wouldn't take this seriously and publish it. It's not surprised that it took a Christian journal to spew lies, but yeah, they definitely should be ashamed. You know, aj, I want to pivot back.
To you for our closing remarks.
Why and in my opinion, it makes sense for these people for this guy to target colleges because colleges is where deconstruction takes place. I mean, you leave your home, you go to an educational center. It's not because the institution is woke. It's because you've got professionals who have dedicated their lives to education and learning, giving new ideas to people who have been altered their whole life. So
on that note, that's my opinion. What benefit does this person have to attack college campuses and demonize them?
Go ahead, I have to agree with you what you just say about the construction and college being where that happened. It's not simply because of the professors, but it's just because you're being exposed to more people who are different to you, like more LGBTQ people, more women, more different people of color, people who are disabled. You know, and you are seeing them as humans. Like the whole point of these type of arguments that this guy was making
is to dehumanize great victims and atheists. Okay, And there was another sociologist in the article that was mentioned that Herman Madame brought him to kind of like counter argue the main study, and he said that atheism correlates with supporting, helping refugees, universal healthcare, public edication, det with dignity, gay and transgender rights, animal whits, and other practices that reduce
overall harm. And I have to completely agree with that, and deconstruction from those dephold religious dogmas is what gould help people become more empathetic. And yeah, where we could stop seeing that type of view that he's trying to spread.
Absolutely, And on that note, you know, I just want to close out by giving some data to all of our viewers. And this comes from the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, and I saw this data being used by multiple sources when I was kind of looking into this.
I want to highlight something. So twenty percent of women in their lifetimes report completed or attempted rape in the United States, and that is twenty four percent of twenty four point eight percent of men corresponding to that eighty one percent of those women actually reported, only forty three percent of men reported. And then women will report that one in three of them between the ages of eleven
and seventeen experienced some kind of sexual assault. For men, it is one in four between the ages of eleven and seventeen. So we have to look at you know, not only how we stigmatize sexual assault reporting, but you know where these sexual.
Assaults are coming from.
It's not only college campuses, and so it's wrong to skew that data that way. We do need to look at, to Jonathan's point, the fact that children are unsafe in this country, especially by members of the clergy, and so that's very important. I encourage all of our viewers to look into that. There are a lot of great resources out there, and it's something that we hold near and dear to our hearts here at the Nonpropit