{"id":206,"date":"2011-02-11T21:29:00","date_gmt":"2011-02-11T20:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/epiphenom\/2011\/02\/grammar-nazi-then-youre-probably-an-atheist.html"},"modified":"2014-11-12T04:41:33","modified_gmt":"2014-11-12T03:41:33","slug":"grammar-nazi-then-youre-probably","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/epiphenom\/2011\/02\/grammar-nazi-then-youre-probably.html","title":{"rendered":"Grammar Nazi? Then you’re probably an atheist!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

If you\u2019re on a first date, how can you find out how religious your dating partner is without asking outright? Well, it turns out that you can just ask for their opinion on grammar<\/p>\n

OKCupid is an internet dating site. Lovelorn individuals sign up and put in a little bio, filling in some responses to standard questions. All that adds up to a an unparalleled database for delving (and the best bit is that, as a private company, there\u2019s no bothersome ethics committees to navigate!).<\/p>\n

They have a whole blog covered to it, squirrelling out all sorts of nuggets. The latest post<\/a> is devoted to the surrogate questions you can put to your date in order to discover deeper truths about them.<\/p>\n

So, it turns out, if you want to find out if your date is religious, you can just ask them \u201cDo spelling and grammar mistakes annoy you?\u201d As they report:<\/p>\n

If your date answers \u2018no\u2019\u2014i.e. is okay with bad grammar and spelling\u2014the odds of him or her being at least moderately religious is slightly better than 2:1<\/b>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/a>As someone who is not himself a believer, I found it rather heartening that tolerance, even on something trivial like this, correlated with belief in God, although I should\u2019ve figured out that religious people are okay with small mistakes. Next to intelligent design, what\u2019s a couple typos? <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0But there\u2019s more. It turns out that last year they analysed the the writing level of individual\u2019s profiles, and compared that with religion and also how seriously the individual took religion.<\/p>\n

What they found is shown in the figure. Atheists, agnostics, Buddhists and Jews were the most literate. Protestants and Catholics are the least.<\/p>\n

I guess the respondents are all in the US, so this suggests a clear link between the dominant religion and illiteracy.<\/p>\n

None of this will come as a surprise to readers of this blog. Last year, research by Darren Sherkat<\/a> showed that fundamentalist beliefs are closely linked to poor verbal skills. <\/p>\n

Now it\u2019s clear that these poor skills aren\u2019t a problem for them \u2013 at least not in a prospective mate!<\/p>\n

\n

\"Creative<\/a><\/span> This article by Tom Rees<\/b> was first published on Epiphenom<\/a>. It is licensed under Creative Commons<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019re on a first date, how can you find out how religious your dating partner is without asking outright? Well, it turns out that you can just ask for their opinion on grammar OKCupid is an internet dating site. Lovelorn individuals sign up and put in a little bio, filling in some responses to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2091,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nGrammar Nazi? Then you're probably an atheist!<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"If you're on a first date, how can you find out how religious your dating partner is without asking outright? 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