One of the major problems in most societies, subject to "great sorts" of various kinds, is the fact that people observe correlations of attitudes & beliefs, and infer from those necessary relations. For example, if one of the first things that someone finds out about me is that I am an atheist, there is a general presupposition that I am a Left-Liberal. It is true that there is a robust relationship between atheism and liberalism in the United States, the problem I have, as an admittedly illiberal atheist, are those who believe that atheism entails liberalism. In a specific instance I have encountered secular proponents of abortion rights and gay marriage who simply find it hard to conceive that someone would have reasoned objections to these policy positions which were not fundamentally rooted in religion. A cursory examination of the treatment of homosexuals in Cuban or the old East Germany would show religion is not necessary for intolerance of homosexual behavior. But instead of focusing on such details of history, I think it is important to note there are societies which are both far more secular than the United States, and more socially conservative: those of East Asia. Instead of asserting this, let's look at the World Values Survey. I use both the WVS 2005-2008 & Four-wave Aggregate of the Values Studies, explaining the duplicates for nations in the tables below. Additionally, I would caution some care in overemphasizing any specific row because of some small sample sizes, in particular the number of convinced American atheists in the Four-wave Aggregate of the Values Studies (n = 17). Below are attitudes to a host of social and political issues in several East Asian countries and the United States. I also later broke these out by religious criteria.
Family Very ImportantReligion Very ImportantActive Member of ReligionAbortion Never Justifiable
USA94.647.437.925.5
Japan92.76.54.414.8
Korea92.321.217.531.6
