First I should state that some of my reply was mixed in support of substitute's allegations about people claiming to be religious, but not actually walking the walk. I wasn't so much trying to "prove you wrong" as raise some doubts about your apparent certainties about us here in "flyover country." I keep seeing so much "coasts vs the middle" talk here that it gets depressing.. It's not nearly as black and white as it's made out to be.
As far as the MA vs KY comparison went, no, it's not statistically relevant in regards to the entire country, that data's going to be hard to come by and I just don't care enough to find out; but I will note that MA has twice as many people as KY, and if 44% of them self-ID as Catholics, it's already almost double the entire population of religious people in KY put together. Does that map to the entire regions? Who knows.
And I wish they'd been more explicit about what a "western" state was. Colorado is both western and middle, in my view, and California only gets one slot.
Scientology is a dangerous cult. So's Christian Science. :)
Anyway, I wasn't trying to pick a fight. It was more of a reflexive "Oh not not Boston again. Didn't we just go through this?" Sometimes my friends page just melds together into one big mess in my head. :-)
I honestly think it comes down to at most 10-15% difference that ranges all over the place no matter where you go, and that's true of politics, literacy, religion, employment rates, riceboys and meth production.
If there's anything I hope we can all agree on in the future it's that we need a lot more "blue states" next time around.
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Date: 2003-07-30 10:33 am (UTC)As far as the MA vs KY comparison went, no, it's not statistically relevant in regards to the entire country, that data's going to be hard to come by and I just don't care enough to find out; but I will note that MA has twice as many people as KY, and if 44% of them self-ID as Catholics, it's already almost double the entire population of religious people in KY put together. Does that map to the entire regions? Who knows.
And I wish they'd been more explicit about what a "western" state was. Colorado is both western and middle, in my view, and California only gets one slot.
Scientology is a dangerous cult. So's Christian Science. :)
Anyway, I wasn't trying to pick a fight. It was more of a reflexive "Oh not not Boston again. Didn't we just go through this?" Sometimes my friends page just melds together into one big mess in my head. :-)
I honestly think it comes down to at most 10-15% difference that ranges all over the place no matter where you go, and that's true of politics, literacy, religion, employment rates, riceboys and meth production.
If there's anything I hope we can all agree on in the future it's that we need a lot more "blue states" next time around.