{"id":393,"date":"2009-06-05T22:45:00","date_gmt":"2009-06-05T22:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/epiphenom\/2009\/06\/of-secularism-and-correlations.html"},"modified":"2009-06-05T22:45:00","modified_gmt":"2009-06-05T22:45:00","slug":"of-secularism-and-correlations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/epiphenom\/2009\/06\/of-secularism-and-correlations.html","title":{"rendered":"Of secularism and correlations"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Well, my last post caused quite a stir \u2013 nearly a thousand comments on Digg<\/a> and Reddit<\/a>, plus the ones here and elsewhere on the web. If you\u2019re one of the 60,000 people who stopped by yesterday, this post is for you. If you\u2019re not, well business as normal tomorrow! (I\u2019ve got a bunch of interesting studies to blog.)<\/p>\n

Of the critical comments, a couple of themes that cropped up time after time, and so I want to take the time to respond to them: the first is the complaint that \u2018atheism is not secularism\u2019, and the second is that \u2018correlation is not causation\u2019.<\/p>\n

What is \u2018secularism\u2019?<\/span><\/p>\n

Some people complained that it was secularism, not atheism, that was associated with peaceful societies. Never mind the fact that the data I showed was for atheists, this argument is actually comes from a misunderstanding of what \u2018secularism\u2019 means. Because the US is a secular state, some people have got the idea that secularism means only the separation of church and state, like in the US. That\u2019s wrong.<\/p>\n

Secularism can mean that, but it also has wider meaning, like the following:
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