When FOX reports it, you know it's serious
Offline FOX News is reporting a recent study indicating that religiosity is decreasing across the board in America.
Northern New England surpassed the Pacific Northwest as the least religious region, with Vermont reporting the highest share of those claiming no religion, at 34 percent. Still, the study found that the numbers of Americans with no religion rose in every state. "No other religious bloc has kept such a pace in every state," the study's authors said. In the Northeast, self-identified Catholics made up 36 percent of adults last year, down from 43 percent in 1990. At the same time, however, Catholics grew to about one-third of the adult population in California and Texas, and one-quarter of Floridians, largely due to Latino immigration, according to the research. Nationally, Catholics remain the largest religious group, with 57 million people saying they belong to the church. The tradition gained 11 million followers since 1990, but its share of the population fell by about a percentage point to 25 percent.Fifteen percent of respondents said they had no religion, an increase from 14.2 percent in 2001 and 8.2 percent in 1990, according to the American Religious Identification Survey.
Of particular note is the size of this study (>50,000) and the margin of error (+/- 0.5%) which combine to give us a very strong confidence in the results. We are making real progress. The down side is that a small but significant portion of Americans are shifting away from traditional monotheist religion, but embracing Scientology and other "alternative" religions instead. Muslims now account for 0.6% of the population. That's an increase, folks.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
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I found the same study on cnn http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/wayoflife/03/09/us.religion.less.christian/index.html was about to post it when I read yours......DAMN YOU HAMBY DAMN YOU TO....umm hmm HELL, HELL MICHIGAN!!!!!
The Age of Reason approaches.
That, or the Age of *shudder* Postmodernism.
I wonder if they distinguished between atheist and Deist for the "no religion"
I would imagine so. In fact, since this study was conducted by a religious school, I'd imagine that if they were going to err on either side, they'd err on the side showing more people being religious.
Then again, there are what... a hundred and fifty true deists in the States? I doubt it really matters.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
BTW it was the Evangelical group that lead Bush to his elections. Now when the crybaby fundies cry "majority rule" they do that because they lack basic civics.
Our system is based on competition, so it wasnt that a majority ruled, but in the case of the Evangelical minority, they merely sucessfully out marketed and outsold their motif and got a majority to follow them, so in reality for 8 years a minority ruled.
Did anyone notice the numbers of self proclaimed "Evangelicals"? It wasn't as big as I thought it was. Certainly a group that the non-religious and atheist group could compete with.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
The wording used in the study makes me lean towards, "No".
I think many people who believe in a magical deity (yourself included?) would still report that they were 'not religious' so long as they did not adhere to an orthodox position.
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
This very good point has always irritated me. There's no telling how the media portrays having a religion, being atheist, being agnostic, being theistic, deistic, blah blah blah.
And even worse, how they gather this kind of data. Or worse than that, how people will interpret these surveys.
Who knows? I guess there is an implication that this is a good sign for atheists, but it's unfortunately not clear what they are really talking about.
Or in other words, stop bursting my illusions or you'll make me cry myself to sleep.
Hmm... I hadn't considered "no religion" being equated with deism, but I suppose it's true. Didn't I read something in that article about the number of people who believe in a "personal god"? Dammit... now I have to check...
(Jeopardy music)
Why yes...
That seems to indicate that they did make allowances for people with alternate beliefs of god, such as deists.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
Take heart don't let the semantics fool you when there is an increase over all over rejection of authoritarian dogmatism and a growing rejection of domatism mixing with politics.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
Oh, neat.
See? Real researches are always so much more clever than we give them credit for.
I'll retract my prior leanings, then. We really may be making some progress afterall.
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
I don't know man. I recently had a college professor state in my presence that all christians were deists. I'm not sure that the term is seeing proper usage en masse.
Maybe he just had a slip, but it's not a common enough term for me to give him that.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
Heh. I just put this story into my paper yesterday. The AP had it for several days, but only released it yesterday.
Personally, I just think it's sort of interesting that this was a survey done by Trinity College. I have no idea what they were trying to do, or what their point is. It just leaves me scratching my head.
*edit* Oh, and hi.
Well, y'know...
The easy, inuitive reaction that comes to mind is, "Hey, it's Faux and some Voo Doo university. If anything, they'd be exaggerating the numbers in favor of the religious - so this is pretty good news!"
...But something else occurred to me (...perhaps due to my tendency to want to dismiss absolutely *anything* ran of Faux News as a lie
):
Counter-intuitively, isn't the smarter play for Fox and religious schools to 'play possum', as it were? I mean, if I wanted to sell people on the typical Christian charges of discrimination and championing of martyrdom, wouldn't I much prefer to release / publicize a study that tells the evil atheists what they want to hear while rallying the fervor of the God-fearing flock?
Meh. Or maybe I'm just paranoid.
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
As a resident of Michigan, I agree with the Hell comparison. I love the state, but the weather is hell.
Also, I predict that the number of non-religious will decrease over the next 3-5 years due to the recession. This may only be a temporary change from the trend of Americans leaving religion, but I think you'll see more people turn to religion in times of personal economic crisis.
Finally, the survey showed that people are turning to Wicca, Scientology and Santeria instead of traditional monotheistic religions. Well......I don't practice Santeria, I don't got no crystal ball........
"A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word, 'darkness' on the walls of his cell." (CS Lewis)
"A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading." (CS Lewis)