lisarea

Well, certainly there are valid reasons for being interested in the numbers, but you're absolutely right.

It should not matter. Ever.

One of the arguments I keep hearing that really chaps my hide goes like this:

America is a democracy! Most Americans are Christians, and as such, it's appropriate to include elements of Christianity in government.

Well, America is not a democracy. It is not 'mob rule.' America is a constitutional republic founded on democratic principles, and that's not just a trivial distinction, as so many people seem to think.

I find it supremely ironic that, so often, the concept of patriotism is tangled up in a fundamental misunderstanding of the principles that US was founded on.

Along the same lines is the argument that X number of the founders were Christians. So freaking what? Let's assume for a moment that they were. They all had opinions, and those opinions are often preserved in the form of letters, published works, etc. While these writings certainly have great historical and philosophical value, they remain individual opinions. In fact, the variety of opinions and ideals held by the founding fathers speaks to the power and significance of documents so unifying that all these people could have agreed to them and signed them into law.

It is these codified documents--the Constitution and its Bill of Rights--that set forth our public policy, not letters to friends and other individual works.

Well, now, that really set off a tangent, didn't it? I shall now relinquish control of this thread to its rightful owners, with my sincere apologies for the digression.

ohwilleke

NORC and the ARIS study are actually fully consistent with precisely the same 1990 figures. There has been a major increase in the number of people who identify themselves as non-religious between 1990 and 2000.

This is from the ARIS study in 2000:

Alonzo Fyfe

To which, any reasonable politician will answer, "Name one candidate who ever won an election with 10% to 14% of the vote."

I think that the assumption behind this threat -- that this 10% to 14% form a voting block with uniform voting habits determined substantially by a candidate's stant on church-state issues is....well....somewhat lacking in empircal support. A substantial portion of them would say to the atheist, "You do NOT speak for me!"

Both the Democratic and the Republican political machines have permanent pollsters on staff to determine how issues effect a candidate's chances of winning an election.

Any numbers we shout at them will simply be ignored as they look, instead, to the numbers that those professional pollsters provide them. And, until we say something that affects those numbers, we might as well be saying nothing at all.

And if we do affect those numbers, we do not need to tell them about it. They will already know.

ohwilleke

Most politicians, certainly those down on the feeding chain, are not as scientific as you'd think. Also, an important part of the question is how the constituencies are perceived.

In fact, ARIS shows that non-religious people rival blacks and Jews in their tendancy not to be Republicans -- and there are more non-religious people than Jews or blacks (17% of non-religous people are Republican, less than any other religious affiliation except Jews (13%) and Buddhists (9%)-- Jehovah's Witnesses are excluded since their religion precludes voting). See <a href="http://www.gc.cuny.edu/studies/images/image040.gif" target="_blank">http://www.gc.cuny.edu/studies/images/image040.gif</a> And are also more likely than any other group to be independent voters (i.e. swing voters), which makes them both up for grab and likely to swing Democratic if candidates care about their issues.

Getting candidates to think of the voting block in this way can be a useful thing, because here is a large group of voters who have some issues that they are in unison in caring about. Particularly, in light of the fact that non-religous voters are a growing voting block, while other core Democratic constituencies like labor, farmers and Jews are either holding steady or declining in numbers.

[ October 02, 2002: Message edited by: ohwilleke ]

[ October 02, 2002: Message edited by: ohwilleke ]</p>

Vorkosigan

the greatest increase in absolute as well as in percentage terms has been among those adults who do not subscribe to any religious identification; their number has more than doubled from 14.3 million in 1990 to 29.4 million in 2001; their proportion has grown from just eight percent of the total in 1990 to over fourteen percent in 2001

Yes, But 1998 NORC figures do not reflect this growth, as I recall. They are still at 8 or 9 percent. I'll try and track them down.

Splat

To which I could only point out that it's the margin that matters, not the absolute percentage. Many elections are won by less than 10%. 20 to 30 million presidential votes would certainly have changed things in 2000.

Geographically, the percentages are pretty disparate (at least according to ARIS; I posted a link to a map a few months ago, but can't find it now), with some states having as high as 25% in the "no religion" catagory. I don't think that constitutes a panderable block, but it suggests that appeals to religion will carry less weight in those states than elsewhere. And if those percentages are reliable, no doubt the professional pollsters pick up on the demographics, at least when it relates to issues the religious right is fighting for.

I doubt there is any direct gain in political power to be had simply by spouting the statistics, but I do think they are important from a PR perspective. At the very least, I see no harm in mentioning--even to congresspeople--that 1 in 10 (or 1 in 7 if ARIS is correct) Americans are godless.

In my experience, fundies assume it's far more than that, more moderate believers assume it's far less. Both deserve to know better.

Alonzo Fyfe

I believe that the rest of my post addressed itself to this point.

It's the margin that matters -- but when playing the margin, it is far more rational to try to win an election by courting the 85% to 90% who are religious, than by courting the 10% to 15% who are not.

Which is exactly what we are asking for whenever we present our case as a fight of "us" (atheist/non-religious) vs. "them" (theist).

I think there is much more to be done by presenting the case as "us" (Church/State Separationists) vs. "them" (Theocrats).

Splat

I didn't mean to derail the conversation by picking nits, but I still think that the numbers can be useful. Ohwilleke's point about swing voters suggests one way that they might have a direct impact, at least in defeating truly egregious theocrats in close elections. But I agree that the statistics in and of themselves have little political power.

More important is your point that:

Absolutely. And the fact that so many Americans don't or won't understand their Constitution and its logic makes this difficult.

Theocrats only need to push pre-programmed response buttons to get support. CS separationists have to deploy a combination of education (explaining aspects of the Constitution, American history, and logic) and persuasion, which is why the analogies you develop are so valuable.

It's also why civics education (in schools) is so important. I think a lot of theocrats recognize this, hence their need to establish and promulgate the "Christian founders" mythology.

Fortunately, there are a lot (a majority, I wager) of theists who recognize the value of separation. That's the one thing that leaves me hopeful about the limits of the religious right's power (e.g., the recent House vote on the electioneering law). Still, it's a shakey kind of hope.

Leaders of the more enlightened sects may recognize the wisdom of strict separation and try to convey that to their flocks. But sheep are still sheep, and it's easier for them to act on intuition and do the wrong thing when they believe their choices won't affect anybody they know. Hence the PR value of being a large-ish minority, as opposed to a small one.

4th Generation Atheist

And that separationist-theist majority is who we should seek to form a bloc with. With 10 or 14 percent we can't carry the separation banner on our own, and we shouldn't anyway, considering its historical importance for everybody. One of our troubles is that we're the live-an-let-live crowd, and, unsurprisingly, we like to be left alone. We can overcome this by realising we're forming a strategic alliance for a specific and important objective, and we don't have to agree with them at home about whether there's a god. Don't forget the head of AU is a minister. We have and can further develop some important alliances.

ohwilleke

Here's a NORC study discussing the slipperiness of figuring out how many non-religious people there are: <a href="http://www.icpsr.umich.edu:81/GSS/" target="_blank">http://www.icpsr.umich.edu:81/GSS/</a>

Among the things it notes is that subtle changes in question format have important impacts.

Admittedly, atheists can't go it alone in the political sphere. But, we are also important and under appreciated. Lumping is vitally important, and a fundamentally political act. In the fundamentalist v. nonfundamentalist lump system, we are in the majority. In the Christian v. non-Christian lumping, we are in the minority.

Even when we are viewed as part of some minority group, say, non-Christians, it surprises many people to see what a large portion of non-Christians we are.

Another recent poll putting the number of people for whom religion is not important, at 12-15% in recent times. <a href="http://www.pollingreport.com/religion.htm" target="_blank">http://www.pollingreport.com/religion.htm</a>

[ October 03, 2002: Message edited by: ohwilleke ]</p>