Why are Canada and the US so socially different?

[Darth Wong]

I can see that Simon is playing the "if this isn't the only factor at play, ie- the correlation is not 100%, then it has no effect" game. Using this logic, he will proceed to show that there is in fact nothing at all which influences culture.

[Simon_Jester]

Nigeria is especially religious, religious enough to still burn witches. Venezuela is a mark in your favor but the Netherlands and Norway are not because they existed before the oil money. There were functional stable governments that happen to enjoy a windfall of oil revenue.

The point DW was trying to get across is that these countries were third world affairs with corrupt governments and tight power structures that might crumble overnight only for billions of dollars of oil money to fall into their laps and sudden prosperity. The lottery winner complex in other words. They were religious before because poverty tends to breed religiosity, then they got wealthy and kept that strong religious bent.

Only Venezuela does not fit neatly into my explanation, an exception exists.

Is Nigeria unusually religious compared to the rest of the region, though? Maybe so. OK. When you specify "third world countries that get oil," the argument holds together better. There's a mechanism, one we can document and observe working and that has an obvious direct cause-effect relationship. Suddenly give a poor group or nation money without having them change their lifestyle, and they start acting just like they did when they were poor, only scaled up. Churches benefit hugely from this because of their role in poor communities where they're one of the main sources of charity and social cohesion. I very much buy that.

But this kind of clear, unambiguous mechanism that we can pick apart is important. It's a bad idea to buy into every just-so story that comes down the road. "Cold makes people smarter and more likely to reject mumbo-jumbo" has a couple of missing steps in the mechanism, ones that are hard to document and hard to disentangle from other variables without doing the statistics.

I can see that Simon is playing the "if this isn't the only factor at play, ie- the correlation is not 100%, then it has no effect" game. Using this logic, he will proceed to show that there is in fact nothing at all which influences culture.

Ah, no.

The question I'm trying to ask you is- can we disentangle cold climate from other factors well enough to say anything meaningful about it at all?

Some variables, it's very easy to say "yes, this makes a big difference." Say, government corruption and how it affects growth- almost every highly corrupt country you can think of is in economic decay.

But hot climate and its effect on religion? There are counterexamples. There are confounding variables- A and B are correlated, but does that mean A causes B, or that A just happens to be correlated by accident with C, which is the real cause of B?

I can't tell if this thing has any effect. I can't tell if there even is a correlation that isn't better explained as "the cold countries are mostly developed and therefore on average richer and therefore on average less religious, but this has nothing to do with them being cold and everything to do with the Spanish and Portuguese funding long-range maritime exploration and the British inventing the steam engine."

There are a ton of factors which influence culture, and a ton of factors which probably don't. Picking out the ones that matter is not easy. I would never expect to be able to do it without being challenged on the quality of my reasoning and my theory's ability to survive counterexamples. Trying to do it that way leads to bullshit-slinging.

[Darth Wong]

I can see that Simon is playing the "if this isn't the only factor at play, ie- the correlation is not 100%, then it has no effect" game. Using this logic, he will proceed to show that there is in fact nothing at all which influences culture.

Ah, no.

The question I'm trying to ask you is- can we disentangle cold climate from other factors well enough to say anything meaningful about it at all?

What kind of question is that? It's impossible to perform controlled experiments on human society, so we can never "disentangle" a single variable like that. Every single correlation we find will always have confounding variables to mess up the correlation, exceptions to the rule, etc.

If we find a correlation at all, it probably indicates some kind of relationship. When dealing with such messy data, it's pretty hard to tell much more than that. The best you can do when studying human society is to conclude that a particular cause/effect relationship is false by showing that the correlation is either nonexistent or the complete inverse of what you'd expect it to be, not by showing that other factors can mess it up.

Some variables, it's very easy to say "yes, this makes a big difference." Say, government corruption and how it affects growth- almost every highly corrupt country you can think of is in economic decay.

But hot climate and its effect on religion? There are counterexamples. There are confounding variables- A and B are correlated, but does that mean A causes B, or that A just happens to be correlated by accident with C, which is the real cause of B?

I can't tell if this thing has any effect. I can't tell if there even is a correlation that isn't better explained as "the cold countries are mostly developed and therefore on average richer and therefore on average less religious, but this has nothing to do with them being cold and everything to do with the Spanish and Portuguese funding long-range maritime exploration and the British inventing the steam engine."

There are a ton of factors which influence culture, and a ton of factors which probably don't. Picking out the ones that matter is not easy. I would never expect to be able to do it without being challenged on the quality of my reasoning and my theory's ability to survive counterexamples. Trying to do it that way leads to bullshit-slinging.

Any factor which influences the way in which one must live one's daily life almost certainly has some effect on culture; how could it not? The problem is determining just what this effect is, and how strong it is. And just for the record, confounding variables do not disprove a correlation.

[Simon_Jester]

What kind of question is that? It's impossible to perform controlled experiments on human society, so we can never "disentangle" a single variable like that. Every single correlation we find will always have confounding variables to mess up the correlation, exceptions to the rule, etc.

Alyrium does it for fun- ask him about what he did with gun ownership data sometime.

The problem is, that's a job for serious statistical analysis. As long as we keep the argument away from that, it comes down to "do you think this could have a big effect? Yes? No?" It's informal by nature.

And there are going to be 'fake' correlations, noncausal ones, that come from "C is correlated with A by blind luck, and C causes B, instead of A causing B."

If we find a correlation at all, it probably indicates some kind of relationship. When dealing with such messy data, it's pretty hard to tell much more than that. The best you can do when studying human society is to conclude that a particular cause/effect relationship is false by showing that the correlation is either nonexistent or the complete inverse of what you'd expect it to be, not by showing that other factors can mess it up.

It looks pretty nonexistent to me, when you factor in culture. As far as diversity is concerned, the cold nations of the world have a lot in common besides cold, because it's pretty much just Scandinavia, Canada, and Russia. Russia's the outlier there culturally, and it also just happens to be a lot more theocratic than Scandinavia or Canada.

Is that because the Scandinavians and Canadians have cold in common, but this doesn't stop Russia from being theocratic?

Or is it because of something totally different that Scandinavia and Canada share, that Russia doesn't? Something like having had state churches lose power in the 1800s instead of the 1900s, or higher average income, or not having a traumatic history of retreat from communist ideology?

Any factor which influences the way in which one must live one's daily life almost certainly has some effect on culture; how could it not? The problem is determining just what this effect is, and how strong it is. And just for the record, confounding variables do not disprove a correlation.

If you can make a correlation out of it (I'm sure if you dug for numbers you'd have a good chance of finding one), that's fine.

But you're taking things a step beyond correlation into causation. And that's where we really part ways.

If the correlation is one-to-one, it argues in favor of the correlation reflecting causation- but it isn't, it's maybe there but it's not perfect. Because it's not perfect and there are very reasonable alternative explanations, I'm skeptical.

[Rogue 9]

This may be the direction of my studies showing, but I do think slavery has a lot to do with it, much more than its being given credit for in this thread. In terms of religiosity, religion was actively used as a tool of control by Southern planters, with white ministers chosen by the planters for their slaves and sermons tailored to encourage docile obedience above all. If there is a factor C regarding heat and religious observance as in Simon's proposal, that's probably it, at least for the United States: Slavery persisted in the South in large part because the southern climate made cotton - and thus large scale slavery - viable, and a combination of planters finding religion a useful tool to make their slaves submissive and the effects of poverty on the non-planter free classes in the South (directly caused by the economic stagnation, lack of viable jobs for freemen, and concentration of wealth brought about by the plantation system) combined to encourage often fundamentalist religion. As for non-religious cultural differences, slavery and post-slavery oppression and civil rights issues have inarguably shaped American culture to a very large degree.

I can extensively cite primary sources, including specific sermons, to support the point that religion tailored to encourage submission was used (and at the same time, non-supervised religious observances among slaves were often brutally suppressed, since the prototypical forms of liberation theology could undermine their efforts severely), but doing so will have to wait if people are interested; I'm typing this as I prepare for bed.

[Rogue 9]

Accidental double post; please delete.

[Spoonist]

As far as diversity is concerned, the cold nations of the world have a lot in common besides cold, because it's pretty much just Scandinavia, Canada, and Russia. Russia's the outlier there culturally, and it also just happens to be a lot more theocratic than Scandinavia or Canada.

Just to add ammo to what Simon is saying. Please don't use scandinavia as examples in north american topics, its almost never correct nor does it correlate like people hope/think.

For instance this isn't as simple as a simple climate map.

Scandinavia is diverse on the topic of religion. Norway is much more religious than Sweden for instance. The number of non-religious doubles up when going Norway-Denmark (7%) -Finland (16%)-Sweden (31%).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religions_by_country
Also just comparing Norway vs Denmark I'd say danes are not specific about it like the norwegians who actually goes to church for religious purposes while danes/finns/swedes attend more for social purposes like weddings.

When it comes to Labor Force in Agriculture it does not correlate either:
Sweden (1%) Denmark (2.5%) Norway (3%) Finland (4%).
https://www.cia.gov/library/publication ... -factbook/
This is because of the heavy industrialisation of the agricultural economy. Everywhere you go in denmark you see farmland, but you don't see/meet any farmers.

Nor does the climate dictate or correlate to any of that:
Finland is 60/40 Subarctic/HumidContinental, so very much like Russia.
Sweden is 30/50/20 Subarctic/HumidContinental/MarineWestCoast, quite unique in its diversity.
Norway is 5/10/85 Subarctic/HumidContinental/MarineWestCoast, more like britain
Denmark is 99.9 MarineWestCoast (if you exclude greenland).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ClimateMap_World.png
Note that Canada doesn't compare, its more SubArctic than any scandinavian country (except greenland/iceland) and its more subarctic than russia.

So saying that climate would in any shape correlate to religion when using scandinavia as an example would be completely false.

[LaCroix]

America is a demographic and cultural extension of Europe, yet its southern half is much more religious than its northern half.

There is a correlation in Europe, where as well get more religious, the further you get south
Although you also have that if you go from west to east...

I think climate is only one part of this, and poverty is the second. Like someone in Germany realized, when he confiscated church property to pay for his big war, and allowed the churches to impose a tax on their believers. Turned out that when economy and standard of living is bad, people even payed money to church in hope it might help.

If you add average standard of living to your formula, it becomes much more precise.

[K. A. Pital]

Cold climates force you to work and plan more, which elevates the importance of logic over faith, and gives people more of a sense of control over their own destinies. It's similar to the "rice requires more meticulous planning than wheat" theory of why Asians tend to do better in math, or the "found wealth requires less work than manufactured wealth" theory of why oil-dependent economies tend to be religious.

The coldest large country (Russia) is among the most theocratic of its overall culture

You'd have to note though that just 30-40 years ago it was among the least theocratic ones. The mass death of male pensioneers who had (and still often have) atheist values allowed it to slide into a heavily intertwined state-religious nexus in just a few decades (and several other factors were at work too).

The North used to be more secular than the South during the second part of the XX century, so I'd say there is some truth to the climate hypothesis, but why this lasted just half a century? I'd say we should rather center on the observation that secularism had its strongest rise in all of Europe except the south (a territory which is both cold and European) in the second half of the XX century, but the rise was a temporary phenomena. The temporary nature of this phenomena is more important than the climate factors. And many examples do go against a simplistic climate-religion connection, Poland for example. Is Poland oil dependent? No. It is one of the coldest places on Earth? Yes. Was it heavily religious? Yes, and to a great extent remains so - one of the bastions of hardcore Catholicism, aside from Latin America.

[Irbis]

Yet somehow people still manage to question things if they're raised correctly or have the inclination to learn... Funny that.

How many?

Learning and properly rearing children to question stuff requires so vast amount of effort huge majority simply won't do it. Had questioning bullshit was so common like you claim it is, Fox News, Tea Party and MURICA FUCKYEAH attitude would all bankrupt quickly.

America is a demographic and cultural extension of Europe, yet its southern half is much more religious than its northern half.

That's true not only in USA, but Europe itself. Souther nations like Malta, Italy, Spain, Greece, Balkans, are considered wastly more religious than anything above them (the only two northern exceptions, Ireland and Poland, are that way due to historical reasons, and they secularize quickly anyway).

The Netherlands? Norway? All of those are countries that have a lot of oil income)

Netherlands and Norway had only, oh, about 1000 years of national history before oil was found. That's kind of long time to form national identity, and yet, even in country with so long established culture of hard work as Holland oil created immense problems.

Now bring in huge populations of more or less random people from Europe. That "+10" is going to get diluted pretty hard, unless the immigrants are just as rebellious as the old people were.

I don't know know about other countries, but through XIXth century, big emigration waves to USA from Poland always happened after big uprising and were results of crackdowns on rebels afterwards. Same as with 1848 rebellions, etc. So, yeah, emigration to USA tended to contain groups of very rebellious people.

And this is still all based on the idea of genetic rebelliousness, which sounds really unproven and kind of unlikely.

Think of it as more altruism vs self-centerism, and studies do suggest altruism might be genetically factored.

While we're at it, in the developed world, Russia is now a very religious country (see what happened to that girl band lately), while also having more people living north of the Arctic Circle than any other nation in the world.

Russia also happens to have one of the highest % of atheists in the world, and the case was only a pretext to crack on dissidents anyway, had little to do with religion.

Nobody ever explained why Russia, in many ways the despotic primitive cousin of European society, had the coldest climate of all. So I'm suspicious here.

Russia was despotic mostly due to single reason, they had a lot of aggressive, strong neighbours raiding (even occupying) Russian soil so only strongest, most focused Russian states could survive - system that become self-sustaining once Russians become stronger than their adversaries.

The coldest large country (Russia) is among the most theocratic of its overall culture (the Western developed nations) while the hottest major country (arguably India) isn't really all that theocratic at all.

What, you never heard how many deaths religious wars and pogroms in India/Pakistan in XXth century claimed?

Easily a million in 1946 alone, plus tens of millions displaced, and you claim it's not theocratic at all? What?

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I actually agree with Mike fully; in the United States, there is a very strong ecoregion/culture correlation, in which national subcultures largely correlate to ecoregions. So it goes further than just being colder. The same thing is at work in Canada, though, but Canada's cultural regions don't have several of the large ones in the US which favour certain conservative ideologies.

Anyway, I think an important point to consider is that actually rebellious people in Canada did flee south in some cases, though nowhere to the same degree as Loyalists going north (a very good song about that is Dave Nachmanoff's The Loyalist, for a totally different perspective on the American Revolution). Others fled south later, especially during the various Fenian insurrections and so on.

But most importantly, loyalism created a political culture of compromise. Canada developed its independence as part of a long mutual process, which is inoculated into its political culture, but it wasn't just an issue of staying loyal until one day being handed independence; Canada only truly had full political independence in the 1980s when appeal to the Privy Council of the UK was abolished. And yet this entire time most Canadians were not upset about it, nor did British people try to stop it. There was a very, very long established culture of negotiation, in short. In comparison the US didn't just rebel against King George; we also fought an utterly vicious and bloody civil war which is mythologized by a lot of our culture, especially the losing side, which sort of endorses and forgives rebellion against the government. I mean, think about it, some confederate generals went on to become US generals again despite committing treason.

Think about what that does to our culture and the legitimacy of violence? In essentially all countries in the world in that period they could have well been executed; but they weren't, and some of them were around to command troops at San Juan Hill and other actions in the Spanish-American War. This was like dumping gasoline on the revolutionary fire, IMO, in terms of creating a culture in which rejection of government authority and cherishing of armed independence were universal, as it taught the lesson that you could rebel against the US government and be completely forgiven, within the bounds of certain behaviour. It essentially, despite failure, endorsed an ideal of "rebellion for rights" which for instance in that most feudal of European countries in the 19th century, drove the grand Carlist Wars in Spain.

By comparison, Canada has a large, large minority of completely culturally distinct persons, and yet there hasn't been some kind of massive civil war, let alone one where the perpetrators were left unpunished. Though sometimes with rancor and sometimes with minor violence, Canada has basically succeeded in compromising and conciliating with the Quebecois until such point as they are basically content within Canada. Oh sure, they abuse the relationship all the time, but they haven't raised a Tricolour defaced with the Fleur-de-lys, formed into regiments of volunteers, and besieged Ottawa to kick off a four-year long civil war. Conversely the need to both negotiate for rights with Britain, and deal with the Quebecois demand for rights, has certainly bred into Canadian institutions and culture a willingness for things to take a long time and for institutions to be created out of compromise.

In the United States? Rebellion was basically endorsed by the start of the nation and then confirmed as acceptable by the outcome of the Civil War--you lost, but with a slap on the wrist, and your generals were back under the Stars and Stripes in positions of responsibility a few decades later, instead of swinging from the sour apple tree the Union troops thought they were going to hang Jeff Davis from.

[K. A. Pital]

What, you never heard how many deaths religious wars and pogroms in India/Pakistan in XXth century claimed?

The question is not the pogroms but the system of government and its relation to religion. Pakistan (as an Islamic state) is of course heavily leaning towards theocracy, but India despite terrific poverty has been a more or less stable and secular bourgeois democracy and remains such until now, unless there are facts which you can point to that would indicate clerics in India can make the government do things. Like they can in Iran or Pakistan or Libya, basically almost in any Islamic nation with few exceptions. I'm not really considering India to be advanced, but theocracy is the erosion of separation between religion and the state, not just random religious hatred among people.

[Simon_Jester]

You'd have to note though that just 30-40 years ago it was among the least theocratic ones. The mass death of male pensioneers who had (and still often have) atheist values allowed it to slide into a heavily intertwined state-religious nexus in just a few decades (and several other factors were at work too).

Yes. Then again, 70-80 years before that it was among the most theocratic all over again. Russia has undergone vast social changes because of communism's rise and fall, and many other factors. Climate might have some vague contributing affect, but I'm reluctant to think of it as a major historical force in deciding state attitudes toward religion. There are more powerful forces in play.

[Irbis]

India despite terrific poverty has been a more or less stable and secular bourgeois democracy and remains such until now, unless there are facts which you can point to that would indicate clerics in India can make the government do things. Like they can in Iran or Pakistan or Libya, basically almost in any Islamic nation with few exceptions. I'm not really considering India to be advanced, but theocracy is the erosion of separation between religion and the state, not just random religious hatred among people.

The problem is really with nature of religions of India. Vast majority of these A) doesn't have one central god like monotheist religions to whom you can ascribe your demands; B) doesn't have any central authority or priest who could have bigger influence; C) is divided into dozens of sects further limiting influence. That doesn't mean religion doesn't have influence on state - but since most popular demands of Indian religions can be ascribed to common sense, they were overlooked.

Still, I'd consider a state where a single spark can kill million people, state that to this day engages in constant religious wars (Kashmir, if nothing else), state with regular Islam/Christian pogroms (though, in many cases Christian missionaries actually deserved it) to be deeply religious one, even if priests individually are too weak to demand anything from central government. After all, India has big, hereditary priestly caste making up 5-10% of society, more than in any other nation, large enough to sway democratic government even if state was perfectly secular, and it isn't.

[General Mung Beans]

state with regular Islam/Christian pogroms (though, in many cases Christian missionaries actually deserved it)

How did they "deserve" it? Unless the said missionaries were going out murdering people or planting bombs.

[Irbis]

state with regular Islam/Christian pogroms (though, in many cases Christian missionaries actually deserved it)

How did they "deserve" it? Unless the said missionaries were going out murdering people or planting bombs.

For what I have read on the matter, backyard stations like India are often used as "out of sight, out of mind" places of exile for problematic priests, including pedophiles and rapists. So, yes, I consider these starting shit in foreign, poor country where they think their money/influence makes them stand above law as deserving punishment.

[wautd]

This is getting off-topic but

(As to the oil thing, is Nigeria especially religious? Venezuela? The Netherlands? Norway? All of those are countries that have a lot of oil income)

Nigeria is especially religious, religious enough to still burn witches. Venezuela is a mark in your favor but the Netherlands and Norway are not because they existed before the oil money. There were functional stable governments that happen to enjoy a windfall of oil revenue.

Actually, the Netherlands have a big Bible Belt. Some parts of the country aren't especially religious, but other parts are very much so.

Russia also happens to have one of the highest % of atheists in the world

I find this surprising when over 80% are in favor of a blasphemy law

[Welf]

Yet one nation is more violent, has larger wealth gaps, and a weaker social safety net than the other. My question is what caused these two nations to develop so differently?

How about recent politics? Large wealth gaps create an upper class who is heavily interested in low taxes. Which in turn means a weaker social net (added bonus: means also lower wages). And without a social net it's more likely that people turn to violence. Not only because it's sometimes the only way to get money, but also because it's pointless to accept a society's norms and laws, when that society doesn't care about your well-being.
And that extreme inequality of wealth isn't very old; until the Reagan administration the USA had top tax rates of 70%. Back in the 50s US CEOs only made 20-30 times the salary of an average worker. They even did away with the 200+ foot long yachts of their predecessors a generation ago. And afaik Canada introduced universal health only in the 60s. So the big divergences seem to be a recent thing.

[Irbis]

A) It's national polling company. I'd take it's results with a grain of salt, or even a bucket.

B) Read the thread about that event in Russia and Germany here. A lot of people you can't call religious were outraged, too, it's pretty easy to whip some support to punish perceived "wrongdoers" (especially when you give loaded questions in poll) even from someone who never goes to church.

[K. A. Pital]

state with regular Islam/Christian pogroms (though, in many cases Christian missionaries actually deserved it)

How did they "deserve" it? Unless the said missionaries were going out murdering people or planting bombs.

You never heard about the Tripura Christian terrorists, right?

[Elfdart]

I wasn't saying it's simple: I'm saying that given the very high complexity of a human society, it's foolish to prematurely dismiss a factor such as climate, especially given its significant impact on lifestyle. A shaky rationale such as "I think I've found some other explanation that also works" hardly suffices to justify eliminating it as a factor.

Sam Houston made the same connection between climate and mindless violence when he tried to convince Texas not to secede and join the Confederacy. I can't find the exact quote but it was something along the lines that Northerners were more level-headed since they live in cooler climates.

[Welf]

Cold climates force you to work and plan more, which elevates the importance of logic over faith, and gives people more of a sense of control over their own destinies. It's similar to the "rice requires more meticulous planning than wheat" theory of why Asians tend to do better in math, or the "found wealth requires less work than manufactured wealth" theory of why oil-dependent economies tend to be religious.

A very old theory, and a very wrong one. The first civilizations came from Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, India, Mesoamerica. All rather warm places. Only the last 500 years the north became the dominant part of the world.

More examples: Stoicism is from Greece, which happens to be a very warm place. The Romans also didn't believe in fanaticism. Buddhism isn't very keen on going crazy, and is from a warm region, too.
On the other side, Europe came up with the crusades, fascism, and communism. All rather extreme ideologies.

[Irbis]

A very old theory, and a very wrong one. The first civilizations came from Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, India, Mesoamerica. All rather warm places. Only the last 500 years the north became the dominant part of the world.

More examples: Stoicism is from Greece, which happens to be a very warm place. The Romans also didn't believe in fanaticism. Buddhism isn't very keen on going crazy, and is from a warm region, too.
On the other side, Europe came up with the crusades, fascism, and communism. All rather extreme ideologies.

I'd say warm places were first to develop civilization, as you could have abandoned hunting in places where you could farm year round, with fertile soils and lots of sunlight. Once farming begun to produce good results, people moved north. Back then, Greece/Rome could have been seen as north, that is, northern range of where you can reliably survive and grow with antic farming. After all, when Rome/Greece ruled the world, both Egypt and Middle East lost much of its importance, as Balkans/Italy would do next, so I wouldn't say it's exactly contradicting what was said above.

Note that outside of Egypt, there is virtually no civilization in Africa that can be considered pioneer of civilization for almost all of recorded history - with too good environment to survive as hunter/gatherer, need to expend effort and thinking on farming (and consequently, need to develop trade, specialized crafts, accounting, etc) disappears as there is no longer any advantage in doing so, it even becomes disadvantage. So, being in warm spot doesn't give you examples to the contrary, not even North's "only" 500 years of domination.

[Memnon]

Okay. Take this with a grain of salt, but I felt a strange need to go and look at the data myself. I'm using the data here, from wikipedia, and combining that with the latitude data from here, since I figure the centroid is probably more accurate than the average latitude and I ran an ANOVA using SAS. Note that my model was super simple (least squares: Yes, religion is important by centroid latitude), and it certainly doesn't account for the high amount of variance within countries -- but anyways, my results.

Code: Select all

Analysis of Variance
                                                Sum of           Mean
            Source                   DF        Squares         Square    F Value    Pr > F

            Model                     1          45396          45396     143.14    <.0001
            Error                   141          44719      317.15317
            Corrected Total         142          90114

                         Root MSE             17.80879    R-Square     0.5038
                         Dependent Mean       72.96503    Adj R-Sq     0.5002
                         Coeff Var            24.40730

Meaning that the model accounts for 50.38% of the variance. Interesting. Thoughts?

EDIT: Okay, a US Yearly total consumption's worth of salt, really. Thought I should be clear on that.

EDIT2: picture!

[Welf]

I'd say warm places were first to develop civilization, as you could have abandoned hunting in places where you could farm year round, with fertile soils and lots of sunlight. Once farming begun to produce good results, people moved north. Back then, Greece/Rome could have been seen as north, that is, northern range of where you can reliably survive and grow with antic farming. After all, when Rome/Greece ruled the world, both Egypt and Middle East lost much of its importance, as Balkans/Italy would do next, so I wouldn't say it's exactly contradicting what was said above.

Note that outside of Egypt, there is virtually no civilization in Africa that can be considered pioneer of civilization for almost all of recorded history - with too good environment to survive as hunter/gatherer, need to expend effort and thinking on farming (and consequently, need to develop trade, specialized crafts, accounting, etc) disappears as there is no longer any advantage in doing so, it even becomes disadvantage. So, being in warm spot doesn't give you examples to the contrary, not even North's "only" 500 years of domination.

Middle East/Egypt didn't lose their importance. There was for example the Persian empire. Which fought Rome for centuries for the middle eastern territories because they were rich and urbanized. Byzanz could survive and prosper for almost a millenium after the fall of Rome because they didn't lost much of value with the western part. And the Islamic empire was richer, wealthier and more civilized than Europe for centuries.

Example: List of philosophers of the 4th century. Note that the overwhelming majority comes from Greece/Turkey/Egypt. And in the list for the 5th century there are a bunch of people with "of Alexandria" in their name.

For Africa I would refer to Axum, Meroe, Numidia and Nubia.

The original theory was that living in the north makes you more prone to prefer "logic to faith". The foundation of civilizations doesn't counter that directly, but my list of non-fanatic philosophies/religions is still a good counter.argument I think.

Okay. Take this with a grain of salt, but I felt a strange need to go and look at the data myself. I'm using the data here, from wikipedia, and combining that with the latitude data from here, since I figure the centroid is probably more accurate than the average latitude and I ran an ANOVA using SAS. Note that my model was super simple (least squares: Yes, religion is important by centroid latitude), and it certainly doesn't account for the high amount of variance within countries -- but anyways, my results.

It's nice to see some statistics, but the data is a bit too muddy. For one the effect the effect of wealth. Also, we want to know the effect of climate on religion. The asked question was "Is religion important in your daily life?". But definitions of what religion is can vary. For example I would count some of the extremer forms of communism a "religion". The person cult and all-including approach of Stalinism and Maoism is not much difference to Catholicism. It's said that the catholic church fought communism because they disliked the competition. On the other side, there are nominally religious practices like Christmas in the western world, which became complete secularized practices.