Well, my godless friends, it’s the Lord’s Day, and in the interest of getting my lawn mowed before sundown, here’s a roundup of some irreligious stuff I came across this week that likely all deserve their own individual posts, but ain’t getting ‘em.
Tyson Koska over at Truth is a Woman is conducting a very brief poll on religious/not-so-religious self identification. He’s got well over 400 respondents so far, and would like to hit 1000. For your edification, the interim results - why not go give your two cents?
You can profess your atheism all you want, but if you were baptized, confirmed, christened, or otherwise formally admitted into an organized religion, chances are your name appears in a register somewhere announcing it to God and the world. Possibly legally, as in the case of census data and the persistently-rumoured distorted membership claims of the Catholic church.
A growing number of adults, once subjects of ‘paedobaptism’, are as a conclusive step in their atheism seeking to officially remove their names from any such lists. It’s tougher than you might think. The National Secular Society of the UK offers a general-purpose debaptism certificate you can download and display proudly in your home or office, but folks in the Catholic church need to supply an actus defectionus to the parish priest where their baptism took place. Confirmation stats are considered preferable to baptism stats, but if you want to deplete the official toll by 1, you ought to get your name removed from any register.
This only renounces your membership, however…no church will admit to removing the actual baptism. It’s an historical fact, like graduating high school, and leaves ‘an indelible mark on the soul’, according to the Catholic church. You’re an apostate now, buddy, and you got some ’splaining to do when you reach the pearly gates.
Does it matter? Politically, yes, if you don’t want to be contribute to religious numbers somehow in your federal census data. Spiritually, a nice ritual debaptism might be refreshing. Send a clear message to God: we’re no longer dating, I’m deleting you from my friends list, and I don’t want you texting me.
Sam Harris is working on some wacky experiments involving MRIs of the atheist and Christian brains, and the preparation included four online surveys on various social, psychological and religious beliefs. He has posted the (unanalyzed) results on his blog for you to check out!
Overall atheists (at least in the groups that replied to Harris) are younger, more educated and waaay more liberal, with a mighty hankerin’ for separation of church and state. Surveyed Christians felt that wives should honour their husbands as heads of the household, and that their knowledge of science was, bafflingly, greater than the average person’s. Most Christians also claimed it was easy for them to change their opinions when faced with compelling evidence
In a March /08 Gallup poll, Americans were asked their overall positive, negative, or neutral impressions of various prevalent religions and the Non-God set.
The same poll conducted in 2006 yielded higher results across the board, suggesting Americans are down on religion in general. Muslims took a serious hit, falling from -4 to -17 in the past 2 years (not blamable on Iron Man, which came out a month later at least). Mormons are at the top of the “bad” scale at -2, no doubt as a result of the recent news coverage of the largely unrelated FLDS scandal. Scientologists are the bottom of the barrel, their reputation also no doubt at the mercy of news coverage stimulated by Anonymous.
The real surprise to naive little me was that atheists are consistently negatively viewed. They dropped 2 points, but that’s within the margin of error for a poll. In any case, they’re viewed second only to Scientologists on the scumbaggery scale. Wtf, if I may ask? Theists, can you reply with a possible reason as to why atheists are thought poorly of? Potential reasons suggested to me include the idea that atheists aren’t moral creatures, which of course makes no sense. What did Einstein say…”If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed”? Word up. Atheists are good because it’s the right effing thing to do, not because Magical Dad will rain it down if we’re not. That strikes me as even more moral, because my tail isn’t on the line if I’m bad.
An extensive report just released by the Pew Forum on Religious & Public Life details the current religious makeup of America. [Links are to survey results sortable by religious affiliation. Comparisons are possible.]
“Unafilliated” came in at over 16% of the survey sample. Of this group, atheists were 1.6% and agnostics were 2.4%; the remainder were “nothing in particular”, which is good enough for me.
The highest concentrations of the ungodly were in New England, the entire West coast from Washington clear down to California and swooping through Arizona, New Mexico, and Colardo (I feel like saying “Obama” for some reason…). The real suprise is in the South, where Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama & South Carolina had decent showings.
Besides geographical concentrations, demographic info is, as you’d expect, pretty even steven amongst the non-religious with regards to age, income, education, etc. There are 2 shining exceptions: nonreligious people in America are predominantly caucasian (73%), and they usually don’t have children (67% childless). These figures too are fairly consistent with the general religious population, with notable exceptions in Mormons, Catholics, & Muslims having a greater percentage of 3 and 4 children households.
Spoiler: 57% of the world votes ‘no’ on God. Europe, Oceania, North America, Japan and Africa are all majority ‘no’s, and as such Topic Agnostic Approved® continents on which to live. The Carribean has the most believers at 78%, which is why it’s so damn hard to get a drink there on Sundays.
Superendorsed® Homelands include Bosnia-Herzegovina, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Faroe Islands, Latvia, Mauritius, and Thailand, were 100% of internet-enabled voters said ‘no dice, holmes’ on the God question.
A UN investigation into religious trends in England reveals that almost 2/3 of Her Majesty’s subjects no longer identify themselves with any religion. A report released today counters a 2001 Census finding that nearly 72% of the population was Christian.
The report also calls for the “disestablishment of the Church of England. The role and privileges of the established Church are challenged because they do not reflect the religious demography of the country and the rising proportion of other Christian denominations”.
Discrimination against Muslims may be thwarting efforts to combat terrorism in England, the report goes on to say. Sharia (Islamic law) has become a contentious issue lately, with remarks from the Archbishop of Canterbury suggesting some aspects of it may be introduced to the British legal system.
In a workplace conversation, it became apparent that people couldn’t name 9 major religions without delving into the various Christian sects to round out the numbers. Feeling ignorant (because I was certainly among those who were going “….Jainism?”) I uncovered the exciting information that atheists/agnostics/nonrelgious are the 3rd large group, with over a billion served!
From adherents.com, “a growing collection of over 43,870 adherent statistics and religious geography citations: references to published membership/adherent statistics and congregation statistics for over 4,200 religions, churches, denominations, religious bodies, faith groups, tribes, cultures, movements, ultimate concerns, etc. The religions of the world are enumerated here.”
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