09.23.09
Posted in Atheist Demographics, General at 2:00 pm by Hemant Mehta
Researchers Barry A. Kosmin and Ariela Keysar released the results of a study called “American Nones: The Profile of the No Religion Population” (PDF).
It’s possibly the most frustrating study I’ve come across. It says so much without actually saying anything.
It begins with the issue of describing who the Nones are: “The irreligious, the unreligious, the anti-religious, and the anti-clerical.”
So they’re atheists? No. In fact, more than half of them (51%) believe in a “higher power.” The Nones include atheists, agnostics, “deists,” people who are spiritual (whatever the heck that means), etc. It’s basically a mixture of all those people who don’t assign themselves a religious label.
The data tell us pretty much what you would expect from that group:
Nones are mostly male — 60% compared to 40% women.
Most Nones are 1st generation. Only about a third of “current” Nones were Nones when they were 12.
Nones are more likely to accept evolution (61%) than the general public (38%). (Though I’m still embarrassed the number is so low for us.)
No real surprises.
If anything, what I get from all this material is that we need to do a better job of linking together belief in spiritual woo and the God delusion — there’s no evidence for any of them and if you rid your mind of one of them, you might as well toss out the rest of it, too.
We also need to help atheists — real atheists — come out of the closet. They need to be motivated to do it, they need to know there is support for them, and they need to feel safe.
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Posted in Atheist Demographics, General, Jesse Galef at 10:04 am by Jesse Galef
There are a few interesting thoughts to take from the new ARIS study on American “Nones” (people who aren’t affiliated with a particular religion*). PZ Myers raised a point, and Hemant is posting his take a little later in the day. I’ll try not to step on his toes, and focus on chart I found particularly interesting:
(I retyped the numbers for clarity, click for larger original)
These are the political affiliations of both the US population as a whole and the so-called “American Nones”. American Nones were more ‘independent’ but over the last 18 years we see them disproportionately leaving the GOP. I was talking to a reporter this morning about the findings, and suggested that perhaps the shift is due to the growing influence of the religious right on the Republican Party. American Nones didn’t feel welcome in the increasingly religious climate.
But at the same time, we can’t be stereotyped as liberals. We’re no more likely to be affiliated with the Democratic Party as the population as a whole is. My guess is that we have a wide range of political views, but conservative ‘nones’ consider themselves Independent instead of choosing to affiliate with the GOP.
The lesson politicians need to learn is that when a party turns overtly religious and welcomes – nay, courts – religious fundamentalists, they are likely to turn away our growing constituency.
____
* One thing to keep in mind is that while atheists are Nones, not all Nones are atheists. Atheists are a subset of Nones, so we don’t necessarily know what “atheists” answered. More on this from Hemant later.
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09.17.09
Posted in Abortion, Atheist Demographics, General at 6:00 am by Hemant Mehta
The Fark headline for this story reads: “Oh God, Oh God, Oh God” 
A new study published in the journal Reproductive Health shows that there is a correlation between a state’s religiosity and the teenage birth rate.
Except Utah. It’s the exception. (Nicely done, Mormons.)
(And “new” study? Haven’t we heard this one before? Next thing you know, we’ll find out fire is hot.)
Anyway, the bigger question is whether there is causation. Does religion play a role in the increase in teen pregnancies? The study doesn’t say for sure.
But that isn’t stopping researchers from connecting the dots:
… study researcher Joseph Strayhorn of Drexel University College of Medicine and University of Pittsburgh offers a speculation of the most probable explanation: “We conjecture that religious communities in the U.S. are more successful in discouraging the use of contraception among their teenagers than they are in discouraging sexual intercourse itself.”
…
“It is possible that an anti-contraception attitude could be caused by religious cultures and that could exert its effect mainly on the non-religious individuals in the culture,” Strayhorn told LiveScience. But, he added, “We don’t know.”
Here’s a glimpse at the states, sorted by highest teen pregnancy rate:
The rest of the chart can be found here.
I must say I’m highly disappointed that there’s no mention of Saddlebacking in the article.
So why does this happen?
And how will religious folks try to spin this information?
Advertisinglies rebuts one potential response from conservatives:
… I can hear the religious nuts now claiming that this study is skewed because kids in less religious states could be getting pregnant just as much if not MORE than religious states; they’re just running around having abortion parties to dump their irresponsibly begotten babies so they can go out and have more heathenish orgies. Well, no. Thankfully, the study accounted for abortions and while abortions were higher in less religious states, accounting for those did nothing to change the outcome of the study.
(Thanks to Benjamin for the link!)
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09.08.09
Posted in Atheist Demographics, Jesse Galef, Secular Coalition for America at 10:48 am by Jesse Galef
Here at the Secular Coalition for America one of our primary goals is to increase the visibility of and respect for nontheists. Getting Rep. Pete Stark to become the first openly nontheistic member of congress was a big step for our visibility. But while that was part of a top-down approach, the bottom-up strategy is vital too. As there are more and more of us in the country, our voice and our presence will be stronger and more noticeable.
And later in life I’m totally going to take credit. I’ll tell my children that my hard work paid off. Thank you all for making me look good to my future kids.
Here’s a key to that success:
Researchers once observed a familiar pattern of religious disaffiliation among young adults, who then would reaffiliate later on, said Darren E. Sherkat, a sociologist at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale.
But that pattern is breaking down, said Sherkat, who analyzes data from the General Social Surveys.
“We’re seeing greater stability of non-affiliation, and we’re also seeing greater numbers of parents raising their children without affiliation, which was really quite rare in earlier generations,” he said.
There’s often the pessimistic assumption in the movement that most of the secular young adults become religious when they get older – usually when they have kids themselves. But if recent studies are any guide, the trends are changing in our direction, and our growth is more stable than before.
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08.12.09
Posted in Atheist Demographics, General at 1:00 pm by Hemant Mehta
The only study I’ve ever seen of atheists in jail is from 1997 and it shows that we make up only 0.2% of the U.S. prison population.
Some more recent statistics about prisoners were just released in England.
| Religion |
Population |
| No religion |
26,626 |
| Church of England |
23,039 |
| Roman Catholic |
14,296 |
| Muslim |
9,795 |
| Buddhist |
1,737 |
| Sikh |
648 |
| Atheist |
570 |
| Agnostic |
514 |
| Hindu |
434 |
| Pagan |
366 |
| Rastafarian |
340 |
| Jehovah’s Witness |
230 |
| Jewish |
220 |
| Scientology |
3 |
Here’s how Martin Beckford of the Telegraph puts it:
Christians remain the best represented group behind bars, with 41,839 worshippers, while those declaring themselves to have no religion, or atheist or agnostic views, now stand at 27,710.
That’s very misleading. It’s not fair to automatically group “no religion” in with atheists and agnostics in this case. Sometimes, atheists do include that category in their own numbers in self-identification surveys, but it’s the same mistake.
“No religion” includes people who don’t think about religion and who may have no stance about God whatsoever. It may also include religious people who don’t want to answer that particular question.
To assume “No religion” is synonymous with “non-theist” is incorrect.
Atheists (and even agnostics) do take a position on the nature of God — they have put some thought into it and attached a label to their way of thinking.
In any case, the 570 atheists in English prisons make up 1% of the population there.
That number is still far below the percentage of atheists in the general population, especially in the UK.
(Thanks to hoverfrog for the link!)
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08.06.09
Posted in Atheist Demographics, General at 4:00 pm by Hemant Mehta
Luke Galen, an associate professor at Grand Valley State University in Michigan, recently conducted a survey in conjunction with the Center for Inquiry of non-religious people specifically.
That hasn’t happened in much depth before.
You can check out the methodology and results here (PDF). The biggest flaw, as far as I can tell, is that only people on CFI’s mailing list were polled.
That’s a big problem, but it’s tough to get a sampling of atheists without seeking them out specifically.
That said, what does the survey tell us?
This new survey reports that confident nonbelievers are more emotionally healthy with respect to “fence sitters” or religious doubters, shows that “spirituals” report less satisfaction with their lives than those who identify with other self-labels, and suggests that the common assumption that greater religiosity relates to greater happiness and life satisfaction is not quite true.
That’s all well and good, but the part that captured my attention was this graphic:
What does that show us?
When given an option to describe themselves using as many labels as they wanted, the top four categories (on the left) were Atheist, Humanist, Agnostic, and Spiritual.
But when asked to select the one best descriptive label (on the right), we see the numbers change quite a bit.
Approximately 75% of people who were comfortable using the term “atheist” felt that that was the best term to describe them.
Only about 38% of self-described Humanists felt that was the best term to describe themselves.
There was also this table to organize some findings:
You can read what Galen feels are the implications of these findings here (PDF). But before you do that, what do you think these results tell us?
How can we use this information to our advantage?
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08.03.09
Posted in Atheist Demographics, General, Science at 2:00 pm by Hemant Mehta
A new study from the University of Michigan tells us some somewhat surprising news about college majors and their effect on religiosity.
Majoring in which subjects would decrease your religiosity? (That is, make you less likely to go to church and less likely to view religion as a good thing)
According to the study: the humanities (e.g. Music, Religion, Philosophy) and the social sciences (e.g. Economics, Sociology, Psychology).
If the findings are accurate, I’m not too shocked to see those subjects on the list (though I’m slightly surprised Biology isn’t on it). In my experience, when people get exposed to other religions, they find many more similarities between them than they ever knew existed. Not just similarities, but sometimes exact stories, recycled between religions.
Philosophy might get you thinking about life beyond religion. Some of the social sciences may open a window to experiments that show the nature of human behavior — and that it has nothing to do with a god.
I don’t know if others feel this way, too, but those are some hypotheses.
Majoring in which subjects would increase your religiosity?
Education and business.
No idea about those…
Majoring in which subjects would have little or no effect on your religious attendance?
The biological sciences and the physical sciences (e.g. Chemistry, Physics, Astronomy).
(Though the researchers add that majoring in the physical sciences does make you less likely to view religion as important in your life.)
Why does majoring in Biology or Astronomy (for example) not have a significant effect on your church-going habits?
Thoreau suggests one explanation:
I think the problem with the theory is that religion as actually experienced by many people is not about miracles and strict codes written on pages. It is a combination of a personal thing and a social/cultural thing… all of these arguments miss what actually matters to many religious believers.
The actual paper is here, but I don’t have access to it.
What do you think about the results?
(via The Daily Dish)
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07.19.09
Posted in Atheist Demographics, FFRF, General at 12:04 pm by Hemant Mehta
Professor Byron R. McCane is chair of the Religion Department at Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina. I don’t know what it takes to earn that title, but it can’t be much. In an opinion piece for The State newspaper, he shows his complete ignorance about atheism in America.
New atheism looked like the wave of the future. But not anymore. “Religulous” got mixed reviews and disappeared quickly. Rebuttals to Dawkins, Dennett and Hitchens have appeared, culminating with Karen Armstrong’s new book, The Case for God. Sales of atheist books have fallen off the charts, literally. Months have gone by since one appeared on the best-seller list.
Wow. The books by those atheist authors were on the bestsellers list for months at a time, each of them (some even longer), but now that it’s been a few years and they’re no longer on it, that’s a sign of the decline of atheism?
Not at all. Every book has a shelf life. At some point, the people who are going to read it have read it, and new sales go down.
There is a lull right now, but more books about atheism are on their way, by a multitude of newer atheist authors, exploring new niches in the atheism genre: parenting, dating, celebrating holidays, etc.
We’re only at the beginning stages of a surge.
Why did the new atheists falter so quickly? Because they ignored important facts about religion in America today.
First, they dramatically overestimated the number of unbelievers.
McCane cites stats we’ve seen before, that say the percentage of atheists is low. That’s not surprising. Part of the reason for the low numbers includes the fact that “atheist” still has negative connotations. Some people who are atheists are afraid to say so — or simply don’t know that they are.
He ignores the 2007 study of Generation Next which stated that 20% of adults under the age of 25 have “no religious affiliation.”
The membership of atheist organizations like the Freedom From Religion Foundation is higher now than ever before and they’re showing no signs of dropping.
The number of atheist Meetup groups is proliferating and the Secular Student Alliance has more groups now than at any time in our nearly 10-year history.
Second, the new atheists thought that books about science and logic would convince Americans to stop believing in God.
I don’t think any of the atheist authors believed that America was about to stop being religious because of their books.
But seeds have been planted. People are talking about religion moreso now than ever before. Atheists who were previously closeted are coming out and saying so. The more that happens, the easier it’ll be for everyone else. We’re less afraid of questioning religious dogma than we were before.
Give it some time. The tide will turn.
Yet the new atheists’ biggest mistake, by far, was to be openly intolerant of religion. They mocked, derided and made fun of it. But Americans today are overwhelmingly committed to religious tolerance.
Not surprisingly, McCane doesn’t give a single example of this “intolerance.”
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with pointing out how ridiculous religious beliefs are — some more than others. We should continue to do that, while sympathizing with those who sincerely believe them. We need to start discussions about religion that many people are afraid to have.
Religious tolerance means people have a right to believe what they want. No atheist is trying to take that away.
We’re perfectly welcome to point out that those beliefs make no sense, though. And we will continue to do that.
Our best bet is to get people questioning why they believe what they do. I’m not convinced that all religious believers have ever truly thought about the reasons they hold their beliefs. And for many people, I don’t think “the Bible says so” will cut it.
Some atheists do this with sarcasm; others make a sincere effort to talk to religious people.
But “intolerance”? Did we beat up religious believers? Did we ever try to take away their right to pray?
Never.
The new atheism is over and done, and its angry tone of voice will not be missed. But a kinder, gentler and (most of all) wiser atheism should be able to find its niche as one option among many in the spiritual marketplace.
I have no idea what the hell that means. What is “kinder, gentler, wiser” atheism? The author says “there is plenty of room for atheist groups that can attract seekers by presenting unbelief as a practical option along life’s way.”
Which is exactly what atheist groups do. The billboards, the bus ads, the books — probably all examples of “intolerant atheism” to this guy — they all point out that living without God is a practical option and there’s nothing wrong with it.
Part of making that convincing, though, is telling people why their current religious beliefs are not worth keeping. It requires pointing out why they don’t make sense and why people need to “break the spell.”
You can’t do the former without the latter.
And if anyone wants to explain what McCane suggestion of tolerant atheism being a “thoughtful expression of principled religious dissent” means, I’d love to hear it.
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06.24.09
Posted in Atheist Demographics, College Atheists, General at 12:00 pm by Hemant Mehta
I was impressed a couple years ago when I heard that 20% of Americans aged 18-25 had no religious affiliation or were atheist/agnostic.
Apparently, I should have been looking to Britain.
It turns out if you survey British children aged 13-18, the stats are even more favorable for non-theists.
According to a new study of 1000 teenagers (by Penguin books in the UK — I’m not sure the methodology or reliability), this is what was discovered:
- 60% of them go to church only for weddings/christenings
- 60% of them don’t think religious studies should be compulsory in schools
- 59% of them think that religion “has a negative influence on the world”
- 55% of them are not bothered about religion (Hemant adds: This means they’re essentially apathetic about religion. Thanks, commenters!)
- 50% of them have never prayed
- 41% believe nothing happens to your body when you die
- 30% of them (only 30%!) believe in an afterlife
- 16% have never been to church
- 10% of them (only 10%!) think they will be reincarnated as an animal/human
Is this just an isolated case of British awesomeness or a continuing trend toward non-religiosity?
I would love to know the results of a similar study with that age group had it been done in America. I suspect the numbers would not have been as favorable as the ones you see above, but they would’ve been close — a trend we saw occurring with Generation Next.
(Thanks to hoverFrog for the link!)
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05.14.09
Posted in Atheist Demographics, College Atheists, General, Secular Coalition for America at 12:00 pm by Hemant Mehta
Harvard University professor Robert Putnam has a new book coming out next year: “American Grace: How Religion is Reshaping our Civic and Political Lives.”
Bits and pieces of the book’s revelations have been coming out — most notably at a recent conference hosted by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.
Last week, we heard that “the percentage of ‘nones’ has now skyrocketed to between 30 percent and 40 percent among younger Americans…”
The latest revelation is that “people of faith are better citizens and better neighbors.”
The scholars say their studies found that religious people are three to four times more likely to be involved in their community. They are more apt than nonreligious Americans to work on community projects, belong to voluntary associations, attend public meetings, vote in local elections, attend protest demonstrations and political rallies, and donate time and money to causes — including secular ones.
At the same time, Putnam and Campbell say their data show that religious people are just “nicer”: they carry packages for people, don’t mind folks cutting ahead in line and give money to panhandlers.
Putnam and his colleague David Campbell add one very important caveat to this: The goodness has nothing to do with faith or the divine or the existence of God or anything of the sort.
It has everything to do with an increased sense of community.
Putnam calls them “supercharged friends” and the more people have, the more likely they are to participate in civic events, he says. The theory is: if someone from your “moral community” asks you to volunteer for a cause, it’s really hard to say no.
…
The effect is so strong, the scholars found, that people who attend religious services regularly but don’t have any friends there look more like secularists than fellow believers when it comes to civic participation.
“It’s not faith that accounts for this,” Putnam said. “It’s faith communities.”
Of course it is. I don’t think that’s ever been in doubt. When you’re close to people — when you have people to love and people who love you back — you’re less inclined to do bad things. I thought that was just common sense.
It also means one focus of the atheist community should be creating and building our own local communities — to support each other in times of need and to offer a place where we can feel respected and appreciated for our beliefs.
When atheists work together, we have plenty to offer in the way of civic participation.
One example: The atheist group at Kiva.org has the largest membership and has also donated more money (nearly $500,000) than any other group. And those groups members barely know each other.
What happens when atheists communities are tighter knit?
The article by Daniel Burke of the Religion News Service quotes Ron Millar, acting director of the Secular Coalition for America (though Burke misidentifies Millar’s group as the American Humanist Association):
Ron Millar… said that nontheists are just as likely to volunteer for worthy causes as believers. For example, he noted that the Secular Student Alliance went to New Orleans to help build homes with Habitat for Humanity a few years ago.
“We’re out there,” Millar said. “We just don’t say we’re driven by our nonbelief in God to do good work.”
(A couple of the SSA’s affiliates did go to New Orleans, but it wasn’t exactly with Habitat for Humanity… what’s up with this reporting?)
Anyway, as churches lose their power, we need to be there to offer the community people want to have without the religious superstitions that so often go with it.
Let’s get rid of the bathwater and keep the baby. If that’s not a *perfect* metaphor for what we need to do, I don’t know what is…
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