Analysis of the findings of studies that measure the different dimensions of religiosity promotes our understanding of the nature of religion but shows that the measurability itself is a complicated task.
Thus, a measure of religiosity on a certain dimension is not necessarily correlated with the measure on another dimension. This increases the difficulty to compare the religiosity of two individuals or groups in an attempt to determine which one is more religious.
Can we determine, for example, whether one who goes to church on weekly basis but doesn’t believe is more, or less, religious than one who never attends the mass but declares to be a devout believer?
Is the one who meticulously performs the delicate nuances of the rite, more or less religious than the one who disregards the details of worship but enthusiastically manifests signs of being infused with a holy spirit?
History of religion is rich with fascinating illustrations of such dilemmas that juxtapose and compare the (super) religiosity embedded in Jewish, Christian or Muslim hypernomy versus antinomy.
Taken from “On Religiosity and Super-Religiosity: Measures of Radical Religion”, By Professor Gideon Aran.