in a country where blatant purveyors of dishonesty thrive (see Fox news, coal industry lobbyists, makers of head-on, etc) it's no suprise that religion has a stranglehold.

I don't know what relation academic performance has upon a person's guillability to spiritual beliefs. I'm sure there are Phd holders who attend church but as to what percentage I can only speculate.

  My perception ( anecdotal evidence ) is that most people simply adopt the religion that they are surrounded by...a sort of monkey see, monkey do effect.

I became a Christian because I live in North America and was raised by Christians.  I suppose if I was raised in India I would have probably become a Hindu.  If I was born in Thailand I would probably have adopted Buddhism.  Born in Iran, a Muslim.....

One of the theories about American religiousity I've heard in Europe is a lack of a welfare state.

People are in constant economic fear and know the state/government/society won't aid them if they fall on hard times so they turn to sky fairies

Yes.  This is a very difficult thing to measure.  I've known many PhD's who go to church.  The trick is, most of them who've had a couple of beers with me have started dropping "code words" when I mentioned my atheism.  Bottom line, my anecdotal evidence is that many educated people adhere to religion without believing in it.

People almost always adhere to the religion their parents practice, but it's very difficult to develop surveys that accurately measure whether people literally believe the religion, or believe in adhering to the religion.  It's a big difference.

Wait, a minute, are you talking fundamentalism or belief in general?

If you're talking about fundamentalism, then I don't think there is. 

I think the larger picture was that people who are lazy tend to have lower academic performance.  Sure, someone might grasp a concept without studying but you don't learn to read without opening a book.  Because these people aren't in the habit of reading/researching on their own, they are more likely to believe whatever they hear.  This spoonfeeding is typical within religion.

I don't doubt that some people are highly capable and willing yet education is unavailable to them or that highly educated people choose to believe.  However, an unfortunate consequence of technology and the overall progress of civilization is that it generally assists people in being lazy, if that is the path they choose. 

If I ever get around to writing a book, I'm going to ask you to be one of my proofreaders.  That's exactly what I was trying to say.

I'm not trying to draw an exact correlation.  I'm trying to demonstrate a trend.

Here are my thought about why it is so easy for Americans to believe.

1. Default religion. Many have not thought too deeply about religious beliefs. For those people, whatever beliefs they were raised with will remain their beliefs. In America, Christianity is the default religion.

2. Market forces. There is a strong financial incentive for people in the religion business to convert non-believers and support believers in their faith. There is no corresponding financial incentive for disbelief. Atheists have yet to think of a good reason that someone should give us 10% of their earnings for convincing them that there is not a god.

3. Social incentive. Churches are great places to make connections. Fellowship is a powerful incentive for people to maintain religious faith.

4. The Lottery Effect. Have you ever noticed that far more lottery tickets are sold when the value of the prize gets high. People would rather spend a dollar on an infinitesimal chance for a multi-million dollar payoff than a modest chance at a modest award. The reward offered by religious proponents is likewise great, luring people who might otherwise never be interested. Atheists cannot offer eternal life. The best we can do is help people reclaim the rest of this life, the only real life they'll ever have. But even that is not altogether positive. Life without the comforts of religion and the community it brings may appear to be less enjoyable than life with religion. We cannot even offer the satisfaction of being able to say, "I told you so." The lottery effect is not the same as Pascal's wager, but it has some characteristics in common. The Lottery Effect does not provide an incentive to believe. It just explains why some people reap a great psychological reward from belief.

5. Entertainment value. Sometimes we atheists fail to take this into account, but religion can be entertaining. The music is good. Many preachers are very good storytellers. For many, the pomp and dignity of Roman Catholic or Greek Orthodox services can be very moving.

6. The God-Shaped Hole. It seems to me that ther is an innate human tendency to seek communion with the divine. The existence of that tendency does not necessarily mean that the target that we seek exists. There is a yearning that seems to be universal among human cultures, although not among individuals. Like numerous other human characteristics, (e.g. height, intelligence, and happiness), this yearning probably occurs in a standard bell curve like distribution among human beings. There have been numerous theories as to why evolution would lead to such a yearning. At this point I think the correct answer is that we don't know why it's there. (See, e.g. The God Gene by Dean Hamer.) But I think there is good evidence that it is. It is easy to observe it in others. Perhaps atheists are simply those who are two deviations from the mean in yearning for the divine.

7. Educational Failures. The American education system does a poor job of teaching critical thinking. We have poor science education.

8. Pascal's wager attracts a few. I think this is a minor one, but it explains it for a few.

9. Cognitive Illusions. People are superstitious about a lot of things. Huge percentages of Americans believe in things like astrology, reincarnation, ghosts, and so on. We are subject to many cognitive illusions that lead to superstition. There is a lot of work on cognitive illusions out there. I'm an eternal beginner in studying the subject, but some good references are:

• Inevitable Illusions, Piatelli;
• Don't Believe Everything you Think, Kida;
• A Mind of its Own, Fine;
• Why People Believe Weird Things and How we Believe by Shermer;
• Calculated Risks, Gigerenzer;
• Mistakes were Made, but Not By Me, Tavris and Aronson;
• How we Know What Isn't So, Gilovich, and
• Innumeracy, Paulos.

In a TED lecture (www.ted.com), Daniel Dennett suggested that religion can be analogized to an evolving organism. it changes to fit better in its environment and compete with its competitors. The "environment" for religion is the human mind in which it exists. The religions we see practiced today are honed by competition to be most fit to take advantage of our cognitive illusions, fulfill our desires, and survive in the environment of the fallible human brain.

10. Self-Deception. For some people, probably a pretty small minority of believers, there is such a strong desire to believe that they can actually make themselves believe. I think the capacity for self-delusion over the long term is limited. Otherwise we could self-delude ourselves into ecstasy and all be deliriously happy.

This is really just a beginning. I am certainly wrong about a few of these. Unfortunately, I have no way of determining which of these I'm wrong about. I could be wrong about every one of them.

Thandarr

I definitely agree.  We (generalization) no longer need to study a subject in order to sound knowledgeable.  We just have to go on the internet and wiki it.  I admit that I am guilty of this from time to time though generally I do this in order to refresh my memory.  However, I also am aware that I cannot believe everything I read and hear. 

 There is a communication theory called the magic bullet effect/ hypodermic needle effect.  This theory was developed in the 20's but the general idea was that people were concerned that mass media could 'shoot the desires of the source directly into the thoughts, attitudes, and subsequent behaviors of the receivers'.  Though this theory is outdated I think there is a small part of it that remains true.  The problem lies not with the media (technology) but with the receivers.  Most 'receivers' of information lack critical thinking skills and motivation - they tend to just simply believe what they want.  

 Shelley's absolutely correct in her assessment that technology has reinforced intellectual laziness.  While I think there are definitely other aspects of American persona that feed the religious zealousness, technology still plays a part.  But it's not technology's fault - it's the people's. 

They are, but MANY that I see are still based on things we'd only learn through education.  It's why I hold little to no sway on IQ scores, I've seen too many biased towards one area of knowledge (ie, maths, geography or english is given too much sway) and very few that don't require education so could be used globally with the state of the world today.

Yeah.  Server crash.

  2 weeks lost,  Server crash. That hurts. Why no double back up ?

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OP , I think fixing the TV should be a top agenda, 

The fucking tv doesn't even promote and teach the computer, let alone balance xians with freethinkers etc etc etc etc etc, The tv is hugely important for raising world wide LOGIC ....  

discipleboy, "Ill explain."

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Please do I am waiting .....

Jesus, an ATHEIST,  hangs out with Punk Rockers of course ....

What's an athesist?  Would I need a topical cream? 

I like how we get accused of being on a fadwagon, then they refer to themselves as sheep. 

Careful. In making a positive assertion the burden of proof is yours. A better definition is "an atheist is a person the understands that the concept of god is empirically unfalsifiable and as such chooses the non-existence of god as the default position." 

I agree with you to a point but your definitions are backwards.  An agnostic is the one that chooses the non-existence of god as a default.  By definition an atheist is someone without theism.  These are they that actually assert that fact.  Membes of this forum proove that by refering to themselves as "strong atheists" which in their definition is someone who strongly asserts the aforementioned definition.  Your "better" definition is actually a ploy allowing an ignorant atheist to hideout as an agnostic.

Strong athesim as promoted on this site does not consider the concept of god as a valid idea. They need neither to prove nor disprove the existence of a deity. The very idea of a deity has no merit.

Maybe I'm just particularly depressed and in need of motivation today.  However, this is the second best quote I have come upon today.  We really need to make some posters.  (OT, I know.  Sorry...)