Interesting Numbers

While I know that statistics can be - and often are - manipulated, mis-understood, and mis-interpreted, I came across two "survey" results this week that are interesting.

FIRST, from the website Worldwide Religious News, found at: http://www.wwrn.org/article.php?idd=31607&con=4&sec=76, comes the story of a correlation between the level of "religiosity" of a particular state and its teenage birth rate. Citing a NYT story, which I have not been able to track, the states with the higher levels of "religiosity", defined as high levels of agreement with statements like, "There is only one way to interpret the teachings of my religion" or "Scripture should be taken literally, word for word", also have high numbers of teen pregnancies.

Why? Quoting from the article, "How to explain the disconnect? It could be that more religious teens are having sex than less religious teens, hence more of them become pregnant. It could also be that the percentage of teens who become pregnant in each state is similar, but the percentage who terminate in the less religious states is higher, leading to more reported pregnancies and births (although the authors did take some steps to adjust for that.) Or it could be, Strayhorn suggests, 'that religious communities in the US are more successful in discouraging the use of contraception among their teenagers than they are in discouraging sexual intercourse itself'."

SECOND, from an article in USA TODAY, [that can also be found at: http://www.wwrn.org/article.php?idd=31605&con=4&sec=74] citing further research done on results of the American Religious Identification Survey by folks at Trinity College, the % of Americans who claim no religious affiliation is rising. Now, 15% of the American population, nearly 1/6 of the population, are not part of any religious group. This makes them one of the largest "religious" groups in the nation. Statistically, a "None" would more than likely be a young, white male, raised in a religious home who probably accepts the idea that there is or might be some spiritual power, but does not attend religious services or participates in religious rituals.

I don't know what to think of either of these numerical revelations. What do you think?