Responses to the three questions on p. 32 of my book

Q1. Examine the Pew data above.  What bearing does this have upon the audience that Matthew Vines is addressing?  How do you account for the fact that White Evangelical Protestants manifest the strongest antagonism to same-sex marriages?  How do you account for the fact that religiously unaffiliated Americans manifest the strongest support for same-sex marriages?

 

 

Q2.  How do you account for the fact that acceptance of same-sex marriages continues to slowly rise in all the categories polled?  Why is it that the current younger generation (20-29 years of age) in all categories demonstrates significantly higher levels of support for same-sex marriages than do their parents (40-55 years of age)?

 

 

Q3. My personal mentor, Dr. Michael Polanyi,1 was fond of noticing that “every belief works in the eyes of the believer.”  Dr. Terry Sejnowski2 takes this one step further: “Just because everyone believes in an explanation does not make it true.  It sometimes takes a full generation for a commonly held [mistaken] belief to be flushed from a community.”  This is certainly true for the social and religious stigma against interracial marriages and against interfaith marriages.  Can this also be true of same-sex marriages?  If so, why so?

 

 

 

Notes:

1 Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge

2 Terrence J. Sejnowski, The Deep Learning Revolution (The MIT Press) p. 271.

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