A Study of Some “Nones”: Atheists, Agnostics, Humanists, Freethinkers, and Sceptics

I was asked some time ago to take a survey. The emailed me and told me preliminary results were in. I now share them with you...



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Beyond Disbelief: A Study of Some “Nones”: Atheists, Agnostics, Humanists, Freethinkers, and Sceptics A Preliminary Report


Some of the main findings so far

1. Atheists as a group were very strongly antitheist and antireligion with a high frequency of self-reported hostility to religion and negativity to spirituality. As a group atheists strongly endorsed antireligious statements. Agnostics, on the other hand were somewhat less hostile and slightly more likely to express some indifference to, and, occasionally, sympathy for, religion.

2. Nontheists generally reported coming to their views very largely during late adolescence. This was true even of older respondents, some of whom did, however, report later (de)conversions.

3. Most respondents reported coming from at least moderately religious families. The degree of family background religiosity was associated with country religiosity and reports of negative family influences on religious attitudes, but not with hostility to religion.

4. Atheists expressed greater, and agnostics less, sense of gain regarding, and confidence in the correctness of, their views than other nontheists.

5. The nontheists were remarkably liberal, with 91% rating themselves as left of centre. Although atheists were not more likely to describe themselves as socially or fiscally liberal than other nontheists they were more likely to endorse certain specific social issues, which we view as a particular type of liberalism we labelled naturalistic (i.e., science-relevant) liberalism. (emphasis mine)

6. Nontheists, particularly humanists, generally endorsed very positively a type of morality associated with liberalism, called individuating, and atheists and sceptics, tended to reject a type of morality associated with conservatism, called binding/purity morality. This rejection was not explained by atheists’ general liberalism, but by their naturalistic liberalism. (emphasis mine)

7. The strong negative attitudes toward religion were independently associated with 1) metaphysical claims (atheism and spirituality – in opposite directions), 2) both kinds of morality (individuating and binding/purity – in opposite directions), 3) naturalistic liberalism, and 4) confidence in their views.

-snip--

Although atheists and other nonbelievers strongly endorsed a number of moral values from the Moral Issues Scale (MIS) classified as Individuating (Table 1), which include values of fairness, justice, kindness, and personal autonomy, they were also likely to devalue or reject moral values classified as Binding/Purity values, such as loyalty, respect for authority and tradition and moral purity, which have been closely associated with political conservatism and traditional versus liberal religiosity (Table 2).13





http://arts.uwaterloo.ca/~acheyne/RAVS/Beyond_Disbelief_short.pdf

With a kick! :kick: & Rec! O8)

But i am just the messenger.

The message agrees with my own observations, though. I was glad to see it.

All sampling has issues that must be considered when doing an analysis. Without information on their sampling method it is difficult to assign much validity to the findings. It could be a good effort, but they need to detail how they selected respondents and how they elicited the responses. Also would be helpful to provide the original questionnaire for review.

Hope the final iteration is more detailed.

At the end, this paragraph...


Future Directions

The present pilot survey was deliberately a very general and coarse-grained, even scattershot, effort – the drilling of a number of crude test holes in promising locations in hopes of reaching some productive aquifers. We think we have uncovered a few promising leads for future study. These would include: further studies from alternative theoretical perspectives of the interaction of moral values with social, political, and religious attitudes and, in particular, the hostility to religion of atheists; closer examination of later ages of deconversion or enlightenment; the relation between self- labelling as used in the present study and more continuous measures involving probability statements about the likelihood of truth in various aspects of theism and religion; investigation of the role of specific alternative world-views provided by science and reason in providing life satisfaction for atheists; and further investigation of the more moderate attitudes and the qualified attitudes of agnostics, particularly whether this represents a more general trait of openness to alternatives or unwillingness to commit to a single viewpoint


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But I see your point. I don't think was meant to be a be-all end-all scientific survey, but rather a test guague on where to go from here. I do not remember how I was able to take the survey but if if I recall, it was an open internet survey and respondents were self-identified in their beliefs or non-beliefs.

In this case it doesn't invalidate their effort if it is an open internet survey as the use of that approach to elicit values and beliefs is perfectly valid. It is when you move into the area of quantifying those values and beliefs that it becomes potentially problematic.

Maybe they will be more informative in the next version.

I certainly will lend more to its credibility that way.

instead of relying on preachers to tell them who we are.

That's progress.

I remember back in the '70s there was quite a bit of news about kids joining cults and being programmed.

Then the parents would grab them back and deprogram the cult-stuff out of them ...

... and re-program them for the parents' favored cult instead.

Thanks for sharing this.

Most Agnostics are Atheists and most Atheists are Agnostics.

When it comes to chosen self identification-


American Religious Identification Survey, Summary Report March 2009:

"Self-identification of U.S. Adult Population by Religious Tradition

2001>..........................................................2008>
Non- religious 29,481,000 (14.1%)................... 34,169,000 (15%)

Religious 167,254,000 (80%)........................ 182,198,000 (80%)

Agnostics 991,000 (0.5%).......................... 1,985,000 (0.9%)

Atheists 902,000 (0.4%)....................... .... 1,621,000 (0.7%)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/metro/documents/ar...



0.7% of Americans................... 2.3% worldwide

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# "A 2005 survey published in Encyclopædia Britannica finds
# that the non-religious make up about 11.9% of the world's
# population, and atheists about 2.3%."
# - "Worldwide Adherents of All Religions by Six Continental Areas,
# Mid-2005". Encyclopædia Britannica. 2005.
# http://search.eb.com/eb/article-9432620 . Retrieved on 2007-04-15.
#
# " * 2.3% Atheists: Persons professing atheism, skepticism,
# disbelief, or irreligion, including the militantly
# antireligious (opposed to all religion).
#
# * 11.9% Nonreligious: Persons professing no religion,
# nonbelievers, agnostics, freethinkers, uninterested,
# or dereligionized secularists indifferent to all religion
# but not militantly so."

'NON-RELIGIOUS' DOES NOT = ATHEIST

Atheists 4% of non-believers......... 96% of non-believers reject atheism

I think you are reaching with that statement, but whatever.

And I think using the word "reject" is a stretch. I would frame it a "chose something else", but whatever. Whats your point?

much like religion, how a term is defined will change how someone answers.

Yes...and...
how a term is perceived will change how someone answers
and how the adherents and promoters of a term conduct themselves and project themselves will change how someone answers
and a thousand other factors and variables....

And in the end people get surveyed as to how they self identify and the results are as posted.

The majority of non believers do not identify as atheist.

Agnosticism, a term invented by "Darwin's Bulldog" Henry Huxley, asserts that knowledge of Deity is impossible, it is an Epistemological statement.

Atheism means "lack of belief in Deity".

The current incorrect popular usage of the term "agnostic" comes from demonization of Atheists in our society, insinuating that all Atheists are rabid, shrill Anti-Theists that "claim to know" there is no God.

Is there any behaviour that manifests on this board that might insinuate or suggest such may be the case?

But please, feel free to refute me by pointing out where anyone claiming to be atheist claims the "know there is no god." really, please do it, otherwise your just lying.

to be expecting evidence of something I made no reference to?

And if I can't present what I never refered to I'm "just lying"?

A bit rabid.
A bit shrill.

Have a nice day.

Having a great butt kicking day thanks! ;-)

"Atheists are rabid, shrill Anti-Theists that "claim to know" there is no God."
Is there any behaviour that manifests on this board that might insinuate or suggest such may be the case?

That was your response to the previous poster who claimed how the term agnostic was being used to demonize atheists as "rabid, shrill Anti-Theists that "claim to know" there is no God."


Are you seriously telling me that you are not insinuating that atheists on DU are "rabid, shrill Anti-Theists that "claim to know" there is no God."

Seriously?

How long till you recognise the >question<.

"Is there any behaviour that manifests on this board that might insinuate or suggest such may be the case?"

But it seems like to me there was sarcasm there, no? If I am wrong, my bad.

on to “insinuating” then down to potential “misreading intent” of “sarcasm”.

A pleasantly short but pointless journey ;-)

Apology is appreciated but not expected or required.

Some degree of bemusement if not sarcasm was indeed inherent in the question….but it remained a question and not a claim or allegation.

“shrill Anti-Theists that "claim to know" there is no God."

I dare ask again….have we seen nothing resembling that here?

No “Fuck religion, no good ever came of religion”?
No “Your God does not exist”?

I admit up front I have not kept links to either quotes, as an agnostic they interest me only as indications of how “shrill” and “rabid” the debate can get.

You have not noticed/been aware of anything of the kind?

They are different categories. Someone may believe in a deity, or other supernatural beings, without belonging to any religion. Here's the figures from the survey (your link doesn't work, by the way):

Figure 1.13

Regarding the existence of God, do you think…?

Response                                    Category    % Nones  % US Adults
There is no such thing                      Atheist        7	  2
There is no way to know                     Hard Agnostic 19	  4
I’m not sure                                Soft Agnostic 16	  6
There is a higher power but no personal God Deist         24	 12
There is definitely a personal God          Theist        27	 70
Don’t Know/Refused                          N/A            7      6

http://www.americanreligionsurvey-aris.org/reports/NONES_08.pdf

(I'm assuming you were claiming your '4%' was from the American survey, even though you're not American, because the 2.3/(2.3+11.9) for the worldwide figure is nothing like 4%. The nearest one can get to '4%' from the figures you quote is 1,621,000/34,169,000, which is nearer 5%)

As we can see, the 'non-religious' includes a large numbers of theists. These are the results from a question about what people believe. "There is no such thing" (as God) was answered by 7% out of 42% who gave a 'non-believing' answer, ie 17% of non-believers.

In figure 1.17, we see what happened when people were asked "What is your religion, if any?" Of the 'Nones', 5% said 'atheist', 6% 'agnostic', less than 1% 'other', and 89% 'no religion'. Many people argue that 'atheist' is not a religious description, and so would not answer it as their religion, when asked. But they can still be atheist.


Anyway, "atheists 4% of non-believers......... 96% of non-believers reject atheism" is a statement wrong in many ways, as I (and others, because your misuse of 'reject' has been noted) have shown.

but the study allowed respondents to self-identify and create its own categories of non-believers based on what the respondents themselves felt about it.

That is not perpetuating a misconception.

I have run into several "conservatives" that are for the most part quite liberal, they just don't identify with the term "liberal" because of 30 years of the label being demonized. The label of "atheist" is similar to "liberal" in this context.

But there were about 10 or so "labels" to choose from in this study. It did not force anyone to self-identify as something they didn't feel they were. If you read it, it was fairly evenly spread as to what people self-identified as. Not everyone was "atheist".

At any rate, what did you think about the findings, aside from the labels?

Unless you are arguing that the two are the same thing, which they aren't.