Speaker 1: We'll often ask for data to support some of the
Speaker 1: arguments that we make because data is our friend, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, we can rely on the data. We can
Speaker 1: rely on the statistics to make a valid argument, or
Speaker 1: can we We're not so sure after hearing this story,
Speaker 1: and Aji is here to take us through it.
Speaker 2: Sociology professor Philip Truscott of Southern Baptist University recently published
Speaker 2: an article in the Journal of Sociology and Christianity that
Speaker 2: was titled Great Suicide and the Rise of the Religious Nuns.
Speaker 2: In this study, he failed to use the scientific method
Speaker 2: properly and stwaight up goes from correlation to causation, claiming
Speaker 2: that the file of religious belief is the cause of
Speaker 2: the rise in sexual abuse crimes and suicide weights. This
Speaker 2: story is from The Friendly Atheist by Hermann Meta on
Speaker 2: January fifteenth, twenty twenty five.
Speaker 3: Yeah, The Friendly Atheists.
Speaker 1: We always love having a clip by Hemmitt Meta on here.
Speaker 1: You know, great show brings up a lot of good
Speaker 1: points and this one is no different. We have a
Speaker 1: professionally trained sociologist and alleged professor who is making claims
Speaker 1: about information that really isn't supported by evidence. Maybe supported,
Speaker 1: but that depends on how you skew the data. And so, Jonathan,
Speaker 1: I wanted to get your take on how this data
Speaker 1: is being used.
Speaker 3: Can we trust it? What's the deal here?
Speaker 4: Oh, you can't trust it at all? Actually I agree.
Speaker 4: Hannett did sum it up nicely, as did the sociologist.
Speaker 4: Ryan Craigan told the author that this was shoddy argument
Speaker 4: and that he could play the exact same game in
Speaker 4: the other direction if he wanted to be as careless
Speaker 4: as trust Scott by linking gun violence to evangelical christian
Speaker 4: The FBI uses the UCI, which is a Universal Crime
Speaker 4: Index for data. And I look data a little bit,
Speaker 4: and even the data he's showing doesn't show what he's
Speaker 4: he's using, doesn't show what he thinks it does. So
Speaker 4: I think this is really a failure of him to
Speaker 4: understand the graphs. And anybody who looks at those graphs
Speaker 4: would say they don't fit the curves that he's saying
Speaker 4: they do. So, you know, like one of them is
Speaker 4: a straight line up and then there's the other ones.
Speaker 4: The line that crosses it. You know, it's like, so
Speaker 4: it crosses in one point. Lots of stats do that,
Speaker 4: you know, it doesn't mean there's anything to do with
Speaker 4: one another. So well, you know, it's just again causation,
Speaker 4: and and you know, correlation, correlations don't even correlate.
Speaker 1: I want to push back a little bit on what
Speaker 1: you said though. Okay, so you said you think he
Speaker 1: fails to understand the data. I mean, is that really
Speaker 1: the case? Do you think he fails to understand You
Speaker 1: think he's being disingenuous? That's number one, And number two,
Speaker 1: you said anybody who looks at the data can see
Speaker 1: that it's incorrect. Well, is that also the case? I mean,
Speaker 1: isn't he placating a demographic of supporters right or of
Speaker 1: maybe right wing people who want to see the data skewed,
Speaker 1: who take comfort in the data being skewed.
Speaker 3: I mean, what is it that.
Speaker 1: A little bit more likely that he's being intentional?
Speaker 4: Okay, I'm not sure if he's being intentional or if
Speaker 4: he but in a sense, he probably is because he
Speaker 4: shopped around to find the publication that would publish it,
Speaker 4: and he finally found a Christian publication that would publish it,
Speaker 4: but nobody else would touch it with a ten foot
Speaker 4: poll because it was absolutely false. So you know, and
Speaker 4: that is what's frustrating about this is that the journalistic
Speaker 4: integrity of a professional journal was violated by this thing,
Speaker 4: and that so anything that comes out of that journal again,
Speaker 4: I would not even take a first glance at, not
Speaker 4: even that, but the idea that these most people who
Speaker 4: look at a graph like that, unless they've had statistics
Speaker 4: or they've had math matics mass of some sort, would
Speaker 4: would understand the graph at least at a basic level
Speaker 4: and be able to see that. However, Yeah, if you
Speaker 4: don't have that education, you're not going to see that.
Speaker 4: A matter of fact, you probably wouldn't even looking at
Speaker 4: the graphs. You'd be you know, looking at the words
Speaker 4: and picking out the words that you understood and forgetting
Speaker 4: the rest.
Speaker 1: Well, that's right, And I want to go back to
Speaker 1: my point because I think I think that you know,
Speaker 1: you have to go to a Christian journal, and you know,
Speaker 1: I hate to paint all Christians with a broad brush,
Speaker 1: but I think largely you fall into that cheap mentality
Speaker 1: when you're willing to believe some of these asenin concepts
Speaker 1: that go along with Christianity, and you're willing if you're
Speaker 1: willing to believe, you know, the person with the book
Speaker 1: you're probably willing to believe the person with the quote
Speaker 1: unquote data, where I think a lot of the people
Speaker 1: that are like minded with this professor probably fall and
Speaker 1: so aj you know, I want to pivot to you.
Speaker 1: You had some remarks about this data to get your
Speaker 1: interpretation of.
Speaker 2: That, I'm going to say that I agree with you.
Speaker 2: I think the data was not necessarily or technically incorrect.
Speaker 2: That you can look at the numbers and see that
Speaker 2: they were there were correct numbers on there all right,
Speaker 2: like how many suicides and how many ways and how
Speaker 2: many religious nones. Those numbers were right, but when you
Speaker 2: put them together is the wrong interpretation, which I'm not
Speaker 2: surprised by, given that there are so many different biblical interpretations, right,
Speaker 2: so they're like kind of a pro at interpreting things
Speaker 2: differently in their unique ways. But if you look at
Speaker 2: these graphics, for example, showing the increase of their non
Speaker 2: religious self reporting, this was actually it's kind of is
Speaker 2: an increase, but the curve is hardly going up. It's
Speaker 2: almost it's almost flat, very very steady going up, all right,
Speaker 2: It's minimal. But this is because the percentage of nons
Speaker 2: religious nuns has moved on average about two percent per
Speaker 2: year since about nineteen forties, and these studies that he
Speaker 2: looked at were up to twenty twenty three, So this
Speaker 2: is around seventy five years or so. Whereas the suicide
Speaker 2: weight has gone from two percent to twenty five percent
Speaker 2: in only ten years. It's a huge increase compared to
Speaker 2: their religious increase, right, So half of that increase happened
Speaker 2: in the years following two hundred and sixteen. You know,
Speaker 2: take from that whatever you will. Twenty sixteen it was
Speaker 2: very specificaliar so the national suicide weight dropped by half
Speaker 2: two years later, and then it went back up in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty. Like there are specific events that happened worldwide
Speaker 2: or nationwide that can affect those suicide weights. People are
Speaker 2: affected by whatever is going on around them in society.
Speaker 2: So it isn't a surprise that these numbers weren't up
Speaker 2: and down, whereas the religion numbers just kind of steadily
Speaker 2: went up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so I think that data can really be skewed.
Speaker 1: And and by the way, the author of this Hemnitt
Speaker 1: Meta did a really good job of kind of breaking
Speaker 1: down some of the things that we that we you know,
Speaker 1: looked over or that the publisher looked over. But data
Speaker 1: can be skewed if you're willing to ignore all sorts
Speaker 1: of other data. Right, So they the author, excuse me,
Speaker 1: not the author of this article, but the sociologist that
Speaker 1: we're talking about, states that you know, as people identify
Speaker 1: as non religious nuns or atheist or or not identifying
Speaker 1: with a religion, sexual assault goes up. But you know,
Speaker 1: at that same time, society has changed so much that
Speaker 1: sexual assault reporting has actually increased. It's not that sexual
Speaker 1: assault has changed, it's that we now live in a society,
Speaker 1: especially on college campuses, that champion people coming forward.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 1: And so another thing that I think we need to
Speaker 1: highlight is that these.
Speaker 3: Reports are coming from college campuses.
Speaker 1: You can't take, as he meta points out, you can't
Speaker 1: take reporting coming from college campuses and represent the entire
Speaker 1: country just based on college campuses.
Speaker 3: That doesn't translate.
Speaker 1: And so you're ignoring a whole sector of many sectors
Speaker 1: of our society that have other reporting rates that are
Speaker 1: not being factored in. So that is something that this
Speaker 1: person when publishing their article. And forgive me, I keep
Speaker 1: forgetting their names. So it's truscott. I keep calling him,
Speaker 1: this person, this sociologist or whatever. Trustcott, you know, deliberately,
Speaker 1: I think ignores things to make his case easier. So
Speaker 1: I did the same thing. So I want to I
Speaker 1: want to tell you what I was able to find out.
Speaker 3: Okay, So in.
Speaker 1: Twenty fourteen, five out of one thousand people identified as transgender,
Speaker 1: and in twenty twenty three, nine out of one thousand
Speaker 1: people identified as transgender. Okay, that's an eighty nine percent increase.
Speaker 1: At the same time, in twenty fourteen to twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: there was a ninety three percent increase of sea level rise.
Speaker 1: So therefore, transgender people are clearly responsible for sea levels rising.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's I just proved it.
Speaker 1: And not only that, but with sea levels rising, that
Speaker 1: means that the ice caps are melting, So transgender people
Speaker 1: must be responsible for the ice caps melting. And with
Speaker 1: the ice caps melting, there are more countries in the
Speaker 1: Arctic that are trying to drill and trying to put
Speaker 1: military bases there. That must be the fault of people
Speaker 1: identifying as transgender as well.
Speaker 3: Right, that's ridiculous.
Speaker 1: That's ridiculous, and that's what trust Scott is doing. And
Speaker 1: so yeah, you know, Jonathan, I want to turn back
Speaker 1: to you, is this, how does this affect the right
Speaker 1: wing agenda? That's that's kind of what I want to
Speaker 1: get at here, because I interpret this as being yet
Speaker 1: another way of a right wing agenda coming out and
Speaker 1: demonizing people. Just like we talked about on Monday. Here
Speaker 1: we have another way that this is happening. I wanted
Speaker 1: to get your thoughts on that.
Speaker 4: One of the things about the right is that when
Speaker 4: they do this sort of thing, what they're doing in
Speaker 4: their objective is to demonize and to tear apart people,
Speaker 4: and this is just another way they can do that.
Speaker 4: They can say all these woke people are doing these
Speaker 4: horrible things. They take that summation, and now all they
Speaker 4: have to do is control the narrative. If this gets
Speaker 4: out well a sociologist says that these people are responsible
Speaker 4: for this, or they have a higher rate of it,
Speaker 4: then they can understand that they have to run back
Speaker 4: to the church and fill those empty seats that have
Speaker 4: been getting more and more empty every year, so they
Speaker 4: can get their money, so they can buy a watch
Speaker 4: that they want to buy that's referencing something we did
Speaker 4: on Nonprovins last year, or they can get a new
Speaker 4: Cadillac or their third airplane. You know, they can't do
Speaker 4: that with no butts in the seat, right. So that's
Speaker 4: what they're trying to do is get people to be
Speaker 4: afraid of anybody who isn't Christian or isn't religious, because
Speaker 4: those people are going to be your biggest nightmare if
Speaker 4: they move in next to you. The problem is, of course,
Speaker 4: that's all not true. Matter of fact, the opposite is true.
Speaker 4: If you want to find somebody who's going to rape somebody,
Speaker 4: go to your local church and look at the youth
Speaker 4: pastor or the pastor. There are more Christian pastors in
Speaker 4: jail for that kind of thing than there is any
Speaker 4: other small subset of the population. Taking a population of
Speaker 4: a university studies that the FBI actually admits that there's
Speaker 4: somewhat of a skew because a lot of the sexual
Speaker 4: assault information comes from universities. They're the ones who generally
Speaker 4: are required to report it more so in that case,
Speaker 4: and also the stigma against reporting is still a big
Speaker 4: deal in most people. People who are immigrants, or if
Speaker 4: they happen to be, I don't like calling me illegal
Speaker 4: here without visas. They don't want to have anything to
Speaker 4: do with the police. That's right, So they're not going
Speaker 4: to report problems they have. That's right, and you know
Speaker 4: that is a issue.
Speaker 3: That's right, that's right.
Speaker 1: And and what you bring up as far as the immigrants,
Speaker 1: that in itself is kind of a compartmentalized piece of
Speaker 1: the bigger picture when it comes to people reporting and
Speaker 1: women in general. That what what immigrants are dealing with
Speaker 1: right now is absolutely horrible.
Speaker 3: But when it.
Speaker 1: Comes to reporting in general, you know, it turns out
Speaker 1: that out of the female population, about one quarter of
Speaker 1: them represent or one quarter of them report or or
Speaker 1: a test that they have been sexually assaulted in some way, right,
Speaker 1: But out of all all women that are sexually assaulted,
Speaker 1: only eighty percent of them actually reported. So the reason,
Speaker 1: and I say that, it's because you know, this data
Speaker 1: is taken from people who are willing to disclose that
Speaker 1: they were they were assaulted, they just never reported it,
Speaker 1: you know, officially, right, So we know that out of everybody, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, not everybody's reporting. And and that has changed,
Speaker 1: that has changed. But you know, I want to I
Speaker 1: want to pivot to AJ and get your take on that.
Speaker 1: You know, why why is reporting so important to this
Speaker 1: story and so important to uh what we're hearing from
Speaker 1: trust God.
Speaker 2: One thing I wanted to point out is that the
Speaker 2: colleges that he specifically took this data from were religious colleges,
Speaker 2: and religious colleges have a lower reporting wage than non
Speaker 2: religious colleges. We know that because women feel like they
Speaker 2: are going to be you know, looked down on, or
Speaker 2: you know, because they had sex people marriage, right, they
Speaker 2: could be they there could be punishment for that, for
Speaker 2: doing something that is breaking their religious dogma. So I
Speaker 2: think that just that fact alone is something that that
Speaker 2: completely disqualifies this other, this study or whatever he called it,
Speaker 2: from being any type of legitimacy. Okay, so he just
Speaker 2: picked in twos what negative correlations he wanted to make,
Speaker 2: instead of considering that there were any other possibilities for
Speaker 2: the race, the rise of rape rates or suicide rates
Speaker 2: or whatever. You know, he's claiming that again going back
Speaker 2: to the religious dogma, claiming that alcohol or drugs is
Speaker 2: something that makes atheists commit crimes. It's like, you know,
Speaker 2: the God of the gaps by for negative behavior, and
Speaker 2: it's just like I see somebody sitting and therefore adealism
Speaker 2: must be up the cause.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know there's other there's something else. Well, you,
Speaker 1: first of all, excellent point. Excellent point, because, yeah, these
Speaker 1: statistics are coming from sectors of society where women are subjugated,
Speaker 1: they are held down.
Speaker 3: Right, their word.
Speaker 1: Isn't important, right, it doesn't mean as much as it
Speaker 1: should in these kind of religious corners, these ultra religious
Speaker 1: and ultra Christian owners of our society. You know, we
Speaker 1: we know that by by looking at the Bible. Women
Speaker 1: are supposed to be subservient. Women are supposed to be silent.
Speaker 1: You grow up with that as a woman, and then
Speaker 1: you go to an institution as a woman that frowns
Speaker 1: upon you speaking up, frowns upon you advocating for yourself,
Speaker 1: you're more likely to not come forward.
Speaker 3: I am happy to say that.
Speaker 1: Those numbers are up, but they're still not at one
Speaker 1: hundred percent. And to mis use that data to represent
Speaker 1: all of society again, we are we are ignoring a
Speaker 1: larger part of the problem. And some of that problem
Speaker 1: that I want to talk about is that you know,
Speaker 1: only forty three percent of men report, and I think
Speaker 1: that that number is probably much higher than it should be,
Speaker 1: or excuse me, that number is much higher than that
Speaker 1: of reporting.
Speaker 3: Jonathan, from your perspective, you.
Speaker 1: Know, as a man, as a member of the LGBTQ community,
Speaker 1: how does this demonization of atheists of nuns strike you
Speaker 1: when when it comes to considering that, you know, men
Speaker 1: go through these traumas too, it.
Speaker 5: Strikes me, like, you know, and here, I don't think
Speaker 5: that there's any way that you can tell you can
Speaker 5: tell somebody in the.
Speaker 4: Queer community that men don't get rape. It happens. Is
Speaker 4: it common? No, it does happen. And when it does happen,
Speaker 4: you hear it in the news. Immediately if somebody you know,
Speaker 4: does something like murder somebody after doing it, that it
Speaker 4: gets all the press in the world because they want
Speaker 4: to demonize everybody in the queer community for having one
Speaker 4: or two people done. That reporting is probably more accurate
Speaker 4: than it would be for a woman, because a woman
Speaker 4: is programmed from birth, if she's a Christian or another
Speaker 4: or Islamist or even a Hindu, to not say anything
Speaker 4: because if she does, there are repercussions to that. Well,
Speaker 4: men like me, I would probably say something and everybody
Speaker 4: would laugh at me. You know, well you're queer.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, well you're also what you get You're also
Speaker 1: you know, a veteran, a big burly dude that could
Speaker 1: handle himself. But you know, everybody can be vulnerable. You know,
Speaker 1: everybody can be a.
Speaker 3: Victim, and that's important to remember.
Speaker 5: And I want to harkem and can commit rape by
Speaker 5: the way, just so you know it has happened.
Speaker 4: It's not common, but it has happened.
Speaker 3: I want to Yeah, go ahead, go ahead.
Speaker 4: I wanted to just mention one thing that the suicide
Speaker 4: rates are up among veterans, extremely high right now, and
Speaker 4: I just wanted to give a shout out to the
Speaker 4: various organizations that are working very hard to stem that
Speaker 4: tide too. And brothers, we're here, we got we're going
Speaker 4: to try and take care of you as best we can.
Speaker 1: And sisters too, let's not forget and sisters too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I appreciate that.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: I I lost somebody I was deployed with to suicide,
Speaker 1: and so that strikes home. We had family a family
Speaker 1: member also take their life, not a service member, but still,
Speaker 1: you know, and let me let me just let me
Speaker 1: just highlight that. Yeah, but you know what for people
Speaker 1: that go through that to see this ugly, ugly reporting, right,
Speaker 1: it's not a game, it's not a joke.
Speaker 3: And this person should really be.
Speaker 1: I'm glad that other journals wouldn't take this seriously and
Speaker 1: publish it. It's not surprised that it took a Christian
Speaker 1: journal to spew lies, but yeah, they definitely should be ashamed.
Speaker 1: You know, aj, I want to pivot back.
Speaker 3: To you for our closing remarks.
Speaker 1: Why and in my opinion, it makes sense for these
Speaker 1: people for this guy to target colleges because colleges is
Speaker 1: where deconstruction takes place. I mean, you leave your home,
Speaker 1: you go to an educational center. It's not because the
Speaker 1: institution is woke. It's because you've got professionals who have
Speaker 1: dedicated their lives to education and learning, giving new ideas
Speaker 1: to people who have been altered their whole life. So
Speaker 1: on that note, that's my opinion. What benefit does this
Speaker 1: person have to attack college campuses and demonize them?
Speaker 2: Go ahead, I have to agree with you what you
Speaker 2: just say about the construction and college being where that happened.
Speaker 2: It's not simply because of the professors, but it's just
Speaker 2: because you're being exposed to more people who are different
Speaker 2: to you, like more LGBTQ people, more women, more different
Speaker 2: people of color, people who are disabled. You know, and
Speaker 2: you are seeing them as humans. Like the whole point
Speaker 2: of these type of arguments that this guy was making
Speaker 2: is to dehumanize great victims and atheists. Okay, And there
Speaker 2: was another sociologist in the article that was mentioned that
Speaker 2: Herman Madame brought him to kind of like counter argue
Speaker 2: the main study, and he said that atheism correlates with supporting,
Speaker 2: helping refugees, universal healthcare, public edication, det with dignity, gay
Speaker 2: and transgender rights, animal whits, and other practices that reduce
Speaker 2: overall harm. And I have to completely agree with that,
Speaker 2: and deconstruction from those dephold religious dogmas is what gould
Speaker 2: help people become more empathetic. And yeah, where we could
Speaker 2: stop seeing that type of view that he's trying to spread.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, And on that note, you know, I just want
Speaker 1: to close out by giving some data to all of
Speaker 1: our viewers. And this comes from the National Sexual Violence
Speaker 1: Resource Center, and I saw this data being used by
Speaker 1: multiple sources when I was kind of looking into this.
Speaker 1: I want to highlight something. So twenty percent of women
Speaker 1: in their lifetimes report completed or attempted rape in the
Speaker 1: United States, and that is twenty four percent of twenty
Speaker 1: four point eight percent of men corresponding to that eighty
Speaker 1: one percent of those women actually reported, only forty three
Speaker 1: percent of men reported. And then women will report that
Speaker 1: one in three of them between the ages of eleven
Speaker 1: and seventeen experienced some kind of sexual assault. For men,
Speaker 1: it is one in four between the ages of eleven
Speaker 1: and seventeen. So we have to look at you know,
Speaker 1: not only how we stigmatize sexual assault reporting, but you
Speaker 1: know where these sexual.
Speaker 3: Assaults are coming from.
Speaker 1: It's not only college campuses, and so it's wrong to
Speaker 1: skew that data that way. We do need to look at,
Speaker 1: to Jonathan's point, the fact that children are unsafe in
Speaker 1: this country, especially by members of the clergy, and so
Speaker 1: that's very important. I encourage all of our viewers to
Speaker 1: look into that. There are a lot of great resources
Speaker 1: out there, and it's something that we hold near and
Speaker 1: dear to our hearts here at the Nonpropit