I will mention that I have only met one person who actually talked about religious history and secular history in conversation un-self-consciously in such a manner as to suggest that he wasn’t using separate “religious history” and “secular history” categories but fairly honestly, e.g. without typical forms of self-deception, saw them as a single thing, history. He would talk about Indian politics, current events, and history in a manner which occasionally mentioned the activities of Indira Gandhi and occasionally those or Rama or Krishna. This person was not especially nerdy, but was of fairly modest socio-economic-status (had been a hair-dresser), high gullibility (involved in Multi-Level Marketing) and probably of only moderately above average intelligence as suggested by a BS in Math from an unknown university coupled with the inability to pass the first of the eight Actuarial exams after 4 years as an Actuarial “student” (the subject is basically a fairly but not terribly difficult mix of 1st and 2nd semester Statistics, Calculus, and Financial Economics. If you competed in the Math Olympiad, think the first round AHSME test from the Math Olympiad but requiring those subjects.) Actuarial Students are given free courses, materials, past exams which provide analogous questions, and 20-30 days per year of time off (in addition to normal vacation and sick-days) formally allocated to study)
Alan has a good point. His post reminds me of this
http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2007/04/nerds-are-nuts.php
I will mention that I have only met one person who actually talked about religious history and secular history in conversation un-self-consciously in such a manner as to suggest that he wasn’t using separate “religious history” and “secular history” categories but fairly honestly, e.g. without typical forms of self-deception, saw them as a single thing, history. He would talk about Indian politics, current events, and history in a manner which occasionally mentioned the activities of Indira Gandhi and occasionally those or Rama or Krishna. This person was not especially nerdy, but was of fairly modest socio-economic-status (had been a hair-dresser), high gullibility (involved in Multi-Level Marketing) and probably of only moderately above average intelligence as suggested by a BS in Math from an unknown university coupled with the inability to pass the first of the eight Actuarial exams after 4 years as an Actuarial “student” (the subject is basically a fairly but not terribly difficult mix of 1st and 2nd semester Statistics, Calculus, and Financial Economics. If you competed in the Math Olympiad, think the first round AHSME test from the Math Olympiad but requiring those subjects.) Actuarial Students are given free courses, materials, past exams which provide analogous questions, and 20-30 days per year of time off (in addition to normal vacation and sick-days) formally allocated to study)