Alonzo Fyfe

One comment that atheists like to make that always makes me cringe, is when they use the data that 14% are non-religious as if they speak for that 14%.

Come, now. The idea that 14% of the population is standing behind that atheist's statement is absurd. Most "non-religious" people hate atheism as much or more than "religious" people.

I can understand why people use the figure. To the atheist, it seems to boost the importance of their statement.

But to the listener, it has no such effect. Instead, when they hear the 14% figure they say, "Look, atheists lie. Isn't that what I have been telling you? No God, no morals."

Everything else that the atheist says is similarly discredited.

And the part that concerns me, I find that the things I say and write are similarly discredited by detractors who point to quotes with the 14% figure and say, "Look, atheists lie. Isn't that what I have been telling you? No God, no morals."

Jamie_L

Well, it's a gray area, I believe.

If 14% identify themselves as "non-religious", then it is probably reasonably accurate to use this statistic to counter the mainstream assumption that "all Americans are devout Christians". The 14% don't all have to be die-hard atheists for this purpose.

But you are correct that this 14% is not all outspoken anti-God types.

Jamie

Alonzo Fyfe

Actually, looking at the most recent survey, the 14% breaks down as follows:

The 14% figure seems to be a conglomeration of the following survey entries:

Atheist: 1%
Agnostic: 2%
No preference: 8%
Don't know, refused: 2%
Other: 1%


Total 14%.

Now, of the largest category (no preference) -- there are a lot of different possibilities. My wager is that this 8% consists substantially of people who don't want to answer the question but also do not want to refuse to answer, people who are evaluating and are presently indecisive among the major categories, or people who for personal reasons (some family members belong to one major category and others to a different category) who do not want to select between them.

To say that all 14% are "non-religious" is simply false.

d'naturalist

Are atheists using the 14% figure any different than religious folks claiming that 95% of the world believes in "a higher power *wink*wink*"? It's all spin-doctoring. Wring every bit out of the statistics you can.

And I'm not sure about this "hate" business. I doubt anyone can hate with the same passion that the religious community does. The general non-religious person might be annoyed at times by the more outspoken atheist, but if there's actual hate, I think you're dealing with other issues.

Personally, I use the 14% number. Then again, I also use the term "secular community".

Crosspost edit: "Latest survey"? Where's this?

[ July 16, 2002: Message edited by: d'naturalist ]</p>

GaryP

From a Paul Kurtz column in Free Inquiry;

Evidence for this recent development is the survey published by the Graduate Center of the City University
of New York American Religious Identification Survey, 2001, by Barry A. Kosmin, Egon Mayer, and Ariela Keysar. This study finds a significant increase in the number of adult Americans who profess no religion. Today there are 29.4 million American adults who have no religious identification—an increase since 1990 from 8.16 percent to 14.17 percent. Moreover, the number of people who reside in a household whose members do not belong to a religious organization has likewise increased, from 46 percent in 1990 to 54 percent today.

It must be granted that a preponderance of the public (if often only nominally) still self-identifies as Christian-77 percent in 2001, in comparison with 86.7 percent in 1990. Yet here, too, this is a 9 percent decline. Today those with no religion are the third-largest minority, after Roman Catholics (50.9 million) and Baptists (33.8 million).

The whole article at; <a href="http://http://secularhumanism.org/library/fi/kurtz_22_3.htm" target="_blank">secularhumanism.org</a>

While I agree that using 14% may be a stretch, I think it is also true that there has been a fairly substantial increase in the non-believing population in the US.

Many people just can't bring themselves to use the term "Atheist" when describing themselves. The more of us who are willing to "cone out of the closet", the more will call themselves by that term, IMO.

Toto

moving this to miscellaneous religious discussion.

scombrid

85% of the population professes belief in some sky fairy. Come, now. The idea that 85% of the population is standing behing that theist's statement is absurd. Most "religious" people hate extreme fundies as much more than moderate "non-religious" people.

But to the listener, it has no such effect. Instead, when they hear the 85% figure they say, "Look, fundies lie. Isn't that what I have been telling you? Moral to soot them. Religion for profit."

Everything else that the theist says is similarly discredited

And the part that concerns me, I find that the things that moderate theists say and write are similarly discredited by detractors who point to quotes with the 85% figure and say, "Look, some religious people lie. Isn't that what I've been telling you? Religion to suit them for profit."

The 14% figure isn't a lie. It doesn't even imply that 14% of the population agrees with whatever statement is being made. Most often, I've seen the figure used to discredit statements to the effect that everybody in this country is religious. It's a bubble burster to those blind theists that think only a very small, warped, minority is without religion. Nobody that I know, knows that my brother or me are without religion. That holds true for most theists. They are friends and coworkers with non-religious people and don't even know it. Those theists think that all atheists are goth looking kitten eating freeks.

Asserting that all non-religious agree on any given statement would be as absurd as stating that all religous folks should agree with Falwell on his nonsense.

crazyfingers

Alonzo Fyfe, I don't know what study you are looking at because you provide no link.

However, here is the <a href="http://www.gc.cuny.edu/studies/coverage.htm" target="_blank">Univ. of NY Study</a>.

Here are the <a href="http://www.gc.cuny.edu/studies/key_findings.htm" target="_blank">Key Findings</a>

See the table at the bottom. The largest group among the non-religious is not, "no preference" but "No Religion".

What does "No religion" mean? I doubt anyone can say what all those people meant when they said that they have "No Religion", but I think that it's safe to assume that it doesn't mean "No preference".

Jimmy Higgins

I think the statistic to use is the faith in god vs education. It shows faith declines with education.

Corwin

That would be more useful if more people weren't so damned anti-intellectual and anti-education...

Fundies almost seem to revel in their ignorance.