Are ‘One in Four’ People Really Atheists?

Did you ask them where they got it?

The first sentence on their website is “One in four people in Washington state are without religion.” It looks pretty focused on WA, even in the url. 

A citation would still be nice.

It makes way more sense that it is just in Washington state. I live in Florida and I would never believe that 1 in 4 people here are atheists. One can wish…

Why would you assume they are referencing national figures when the website advertised is called 1in4WA? It also, BTW, has the citation you are looking for.

Good to know there is substantiation for the statistics…
I was worried as we cannot afford to lose outr credibility (or lead any doubts that we might be “immoral sinnerful liars”).   

If it was the age group supposition that Hermant feared, then that would have been unacceptable.  By for a “Seattle Athiest” group advertising in Seatle to use Seattle / Washington state statistics is completely acceptable. 

Nice adverts! 
Nice publicity locally… but be prepared to defend the stats when interviewed.

While it is true the 25% of Washingtonians are “Nones” I wouldn’t go as far as calling all of them atheists and though I agree that the percentage is probably higher in Seattle, we don’t know much about their beliefs. We found in the ARIS that 12% hold theologically atheist or agnostic beliefs, probably higher in Washington, if proportions were consistent across all regions, but not sure if it is 25%

Ashley-  I’m a Floridian too, although in a university town (aka pocket of heathens).  If I were to walk down my block, I am confident that I would get higher than 1 in 4… but I live a stone’s throw from campus.  As soon as I ride my bike a mile in any direction, I meet the south.

I do like the adds.  Four people doing very normal, everyday things together.  Nice impact! 

Personally, I also include the 6.82% of Americans under the age of four as Atheists.
http://www.censusscope.org/us/chart_age.html

Hey, the godbots have been fudging the truth as long as there’s been a truth to fudge. They call the bible the “worlds best selling book”. Has anyone ever paid for a copy of the bible? They hand them out with gay abandon, but they’re not “sold”. They’re supplied. They call their nonsense “good news”. It’s not, it’s hateful nonsense. They call their charity arm “worls vision”. It’s not, it’s purely there to sell the “good news”. So, if the WA atheists have fudged the figures, they’re only following the example of the deluded minions, the sheep who can’t think for themselves, but love saying things that sound cool and good but really are the opposite of what they say.

Whether that statistic is true or not, those are some gorgeous ads! Props to the Seattle Atheists for graphic design, at least.

Again… the AVIS study listed here as a resource:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreligion_in_the_United_States

I am the fiancé of the lady in the beginning of the video and a member of Seattle Atheists.

Keep in mind that Deists are included and they are technically atheists (without religion).

Thomas Jefferson was a Deist. 😉

Is he the “something a week” guy?  If so, I love his work.

Indeed you are correct.

The billboard is meant to represent “nones” in Washington state, via ARIS.  You’re correct in that it shouldn’t say “1 in 4 are atheist” so much as “1 in 4 are irreligious”.

Yep, that is the man!

Well, many of us consider atheism to be anything short of a positive declaration of theism (since “not theist” is the most basic meaning of “atheist”), which pretty comfortable includes the “nones.”

I’m pretty sure someone who is “spiritual but not religious” is not a true theist, and therefore atheist. (Call it “weak atheism” if you like.)

Todd, if you look at page 14 of “American Nones” it has a table dividing Nones in categories of self-identification, belief and behavior. About 11% of Nones are atheist or agnostic in their identification, but theologically 7% are atheist and 35% agnostic to various degrees, an additional 24% are deists. I coauthored the report.

I think these ads are very deceptive.

These “nones” are not all atheists, not by a long shot. The meaning of the answer “none” depends on the exact question being asked. In the 2008 ARIS survey, which is the referenced  source, the question was “What is your religion, if any?” Answering “none” to that only means they do not consider themselves a member of, or affiliated with a particular religion. A person does not need any particular religion in order to believe in deities or supernatural beings.

The 2008 ARIS provides a detailed profile of the American “Nones.” you can find a PDF of it here:
http://commons.trincoll.edu/aris/publications/american-nones-the-profile-of-the-no-religion-population/
They asked further questions of those responding “none” to the question
about their religion, and nationally their beliefs break down this way:  (figure 1.17)
Belief (N=1,106)
Atheist  7%
Hard Agnostic  19%
Soft Agnostic  16%
Deist  24%
Theist  27%
Don’t know/refused  7%
That totals 100% of the “Nones.” 

I’m not the most skilled at math, so please check my figuring:

51% of the nones say they’re deists or theists, so they believe in a god or gods.  42% of the nones declare themselves to be atheists or agnostics.  The national percentage of nones was 15%. So nationally, 42% of 15% means the actual atheists and agnostics in 2008 were 6.3%.  If Washington state has a nones population of 25%, and if the national breakdown of the nones is similar in Washington, then 42% of 25% means their actual percentage of atheists and agnostics is only 10.5%

But the deception is worse than that.

The ads say “One in four is an atheist.” They don’t say “is an atheist or an agnostic,” so that is heavily fudging on the agnostics part of the nones, and they’re grossly misrepresenting all of the nones group as having no believers at all. If only 7% of the national count of nones are actually bona fide atheists, and if that percent is similar in Washington, then 7% of their claimed 25% nones means the percentage of actual atheists in Washington is only 1.75%. Expressed as a fraction, that’s 7/400.

So an honest ad would have to say, “One in 57 is an atheist.”

They’d have to show a crowd of 57 people, not an intimate group of four. Not nearly as impressive, I’m afraid.

Please check my figures. I’d like to be wrong, but we should not lie.

25% doesn’t seem very high to me.  In England it has been reported at 39%.  Even then only 15% of people regularly attend a place of worship and go through the rituals of religion like prayer.  We’re not event he most irreligious nation.

Anyway, good for Washington and the other states where non-belief is the norm.  It will continue to grow as long as people aren’t bullied into hiding their lack of faith.

a-theist – doesn’t ‘do’ gods.

Ok, so take it world-wide. More than a billion Buddhists? Them’s atheists all right.
Europe – closer to 50% non-religious atheists.
How about all those ‘tolerant’ and ‘moderate’ muslims-in-name-only (because they like breathing)?

I think you will find that 25% of the worlds population not kowtowing to a deity is a very modest statistic.
 

There are not more than a billion Buddhists. Moreover, many branches of Buddhism are not what you would call “atheists”.

One thing for sure, she’s definitely not a skeptic. 😉

I have an acquaintance with a very devout Christian belief who claims not to be religious. She thinks of what she has as a personal spiritual truth. Like gravity. I suppose she might be included in that category with us. 😛

come on America – here in the UK were on the rise – i know you can keep up!

this latest survey: http://ir2.flife.de/data/natcen-social-research/igb_html/index.php?bericht_id=1000001&index=&lang=ENG

suggests that in the UK 1 in 2 are atheist, while its 2 in 3 for 18-24 year olds.

looks like were on the winning team.

Your posters don’t seem to realize that no major religion postulates God as an individual entity.  If God is everywhere all the time, then God cannot be an individual because, for example,  to be an individual, A, means there must be some where that A is not present. This is cannot occur in the case of God being everywhere all the time. There is not non-God.

 The contemplative/mystic cores of all major religions are in clear  agreement on this.

The problem lies partly in the use of language which depends upon difference and partly on the need for some to adopt a preliminary human model for God as a way of holding the concept of God in their conditioned consciousness. Get rid of the conditioning and the need to human relationship models disappears and God is no longer considered as an individual.

You can believe in those things – or allow for the possibility of them – and still not believe in god. Atheist just means you don’t believe in god, it says nothing about spirits, the soul, life after death or myriad other things. It ONLY means you don’t believe in god.

Being without a religion is not the same as being an Atheist. Being without a religion merely means that someone does not adhere to a specific religion. It does not mean that the person denies all religions or even any one religion.

FYI: Atheism is a religion, albeit it a fundamentalist religion. Its arguments are only with other fundamentalists religions. It is a cases of a child saying, “My religion is better than yours.”  Not very mature.

Correction. It only means you don’t believe in an individuated god. But no major religion at its core holds that God is an individual.

i’m going to jump in unread and say, fuck yeah. there are  A LOT more atheists and agnostics than the “official” numbers report. how do i know? a lot of time at Divinity school, for one. but mostly, my interaction on the internets. if atheists are “only” 2=16% of the population, then why do they keep showing up on all the blogs i read? not just the ones i write for and like, but you know, like everywhere? i even see atheist postings at religious blogs. since social networking tech came to be, it seems to me that a lot of us have realized, “hey, i’m not alone.” i worked at the div school that does a very major study about religion and belief that many of the ‘serious’ media use as the basis for their reporting on religion and i’m telling you: the trend is toward less belief. the SCLM won’t report this fact clearly, and muddles it b/c they make money off belief. but if you go with simple science, the trend is clear. younger people are much, much more skeptical about religion. and that makes sense, given, well, a lot of stuff. LOTR, NASA, WOW… all these destroy firm belief in “one nation one god” and all i can say is that i’m glad. 

Expand and explain, please.

I particularly like how someone who is ignorant of atheism decides to tell atheists what it is that we believe.  That always goes down well.  Don’t you think?

You have to explore the contemplative or mystical core of religions. They all say the same thing.

So, is using the contradictions of holy texts against the religions a “misunderstanding”? Is it a misunderstanding if I think the story of the talking snake is bullshit???

Lies, damn lies and statistics.

As I have said elsewhere in this thread, Atheism is just another fundamentalist religion arguing with other fundamentalist religions.

Your lack of awareness of the essence of religion, specifically, in this case, the ultimate nature of God,  is typical of the mistakes upon which Atheists based their theories. Even when I lay out for you the reason why God cannot be considered to be an individual, you still maintain your mistaken Atheist illusions about religion. I suggest that you investigate the contemplative core of any religion before making any more mistakes.

Your denial and wishful thinking does not constitute refutation. Atheism is founded on logical and factual mistakes. It is defended by denial. 

Your reading comprehension also needs some practice as I laid why Rob Bos was wrong and where he could access accurate info re religion. 

the term is atheism not aspiritualism.  theism is religous beleif in the existance of a god.  anyone who puts down “none” is by definition an athiest.  even agnosticism is athiest.  i.e. non-theist

believes in the non-existance of a god is called anti-theism.

if they were not athiests they would reply “other” not “none”

Thanks guys!

Perhaps 1 in 4 know know god does not exist- but it is the rest who worship a god that does not exist. 

Most know there is no god – and still claim to believe. 

Not so. Most evangelical christians HATE the word “religion”. Religion is a bad thing. They claim that what they have is a “relationship with Jesus Christ, not religion”. So all liberal christians, and those of other faiths, are “religious”, but not them. And this post is about theistic believers, not specifically about religious people. You don’t need a God to have a religious belief.

Omprem, enlighten us as to the “logical and factual mistakes” that our scepticism towards claims about gods are founded on.  We’re open to evidence and reasoned arguments, unlike many theists.  It’s just that we don’t see any evidence and the reasoning in theistic arguments is really weak.

Atheist resistance is indeed futile. Atheism rails against religion but is itself a religion. Atheism follows the well-trod path known as the via negative in Roman Catholicism;  Jnana Yoga in Hindism; the Lahoot Salbi  path of Islam, found principally the Shia and Sufi paths; the Ein-sof aspect of Judaism plus Buddhism and Taoism or Daoism.  This path differs from the Via Positiva approach which assumes that positive statements can be made about God.  The Via Negativa path to the Divine has been practiced for many millenia by all religions. It is the mystical approach to the Divine.

 Atheism  makes several errors in attempting to follow this spiritual path.

1. Atheism is at the early stages of the first phase of the Via Negativa process. It is good at pointing out that God is not here or there. But it  generally does so with ridicule both of God and of those who believe in God. Its ridicule is the logical fallacy of argumentum ad hominem. It is also an expression of a rampant ego. This tendency to  ridicule betrays the insecurity and fear of Atheists and their intuitive sense that Atheism has major flaws.

2. Atheism has not yet begun to question the quality of its empirical methodology. It has not even considered whether or not empiricism is valid for spiritual purposes, nor whether there other means of  acquiring wisdom.

3. Atheism attempts to apply only literalist interpretations to the non-literal approach of Via Negativa. While both Atheism and the Via Negativa path know that God is not an object in the universe, Atheism, curiously contradicts this wisdom by insisting on the primacy of sense data, logic and language in describing God despite these being only applicable only to the phenomenal.

4. Another mistake that Atheism makes is assuming that because God is not localized in a particular place as opposed to some other place, God therefore does not exist. One is reminded of frenzy of the Atheist’s search for Go by Baroness Emmuska Orczy’s description of the search for the Scarlet Pimpernel,
              They seek him here,
              they seek him there.
              Those Frenchies seek him     
              everywhere.
               Is he in heaven or is he in hell?
               That damned elusive Pimpernel.

5.  A related mistake of Atheism is to
assume that because God is not apparent to the senses God therefore does not exist.

 The inherent tension of holding these
false assumptions and their conclusions is what gives Atheism its stridency and negativity. Those Atheists who actually believe in these assumptions and their conclusions at both a conscious and a subconscious level project a complacency that is at odds with the rigorous nature of their chosen spiritual path, the Via Negativa. But regardless of how deeply the doctrine of Atheism is held by its adherents,  the pronouncements of Atheism all contain at least one logical and/or factual error. This is a very strange situation for a belief system that considers logical inquiry to be  the primary and only vehicle for spiritual investigation.

Not so? I just said the exact same thing as you! -_-

EXACTLY! But one can’t see or measure a relationship, so don’t expect Atheists embrace this idea. Atheists have to be willing (and able) to utilize other means of “knowing” besides reason but reason is all they have (or think they have).

God is a state of being, a state of consciousness. It is the same as Nirvana. You confusing gods with God. It is a  logical error. There is a difference.  Better luck next time.

All of those ‘definitions’ apply to Atheism. I particularly like #4. You claim a lack of belief but fail to consider what that lack of belief but fail to consider on what that position is based upon. Nor do you consider the vehemence (oops, excuse me, ardor and faith) with which that position is promulgated. 

What’s the difference between Atheist bus ads and Jehovah’s Witnesses standing on the corner handing out tracts. Answer: None, except the Atheists do not put themselves out on public view and prefer to hide behind print.

But Atheists use those numbers which include those who “have a relationship with Jesus Christ”, to claim that Atheism is growing. It could be that the Evangelical numbers are growing while the Atheist numbers are declining. This is just another example of desperation (based on a logical error) to which Atheists go to attempt to justify their unjustifiable position.

Is it because of the heavy rainfalls in both cities, Portland and Seattle, 37″+, that leads to depression, negativity and loss of religion/spirituality?

So many errors here.

There is more than yes or no to your question, “Do you believe in God.”  Your attempting to limit the response is a logical error known as  bifurcation or false dichotomy.

Believing in God is not faith. Faith is a process of attuning oneself to the Divine.

Science does not contradict religion. In fact, the outer edges of astro-physics is very much in accord with the contemplative aspects of religion. 

The “reason” of Atheists is a false reason based on the silly notion that what one can perceive through the senses while in a certain frame of mind is all that can be perceived. It is  both a bifurcation error and a self-serving circular argument. This error is compounded by the false assumption there are no other ways to gain wisdom.

You are the one who is making an error in your assessment of atheism.  It has been corrected by several people including myself.  You continue to make the same error and now you play the victim card.  Wrongly I might add.  You aren’t being attacked.  Your assessment and poor logic are being attacked.  If I wanted to attack you I would characterise you as a troll and post a picture to make people snigger at you.

But that would be rude.http://lh5.ggpht.com/_TJDS_aEA3Cs/TaoZoLe2PMI/AAAAAAAAAS0/VH1OJjuT85s/AncientTroll%5B4%5D.jpg 

Scripture uses parables, allegories and metaphors to characterize spiritual aspects because the low-level type of rationality employed by Atheists (which rests on sense data) is incapable of approaching the Sacred.

You just don’t get it, do you?  You are the one making the assertion.  Not we atheists.  Back up your claims or withdraw.

One cannot “prove” God. God can only be experienced.

 I have outlined the errors of Atheism in my below response to  Annie.

Well, Mormonism is completely unambiguous in viewing God as an individual, so that’s at least one counterexample to Omprem’s claim.  I’m less familiar with mainstream Christianity, but it certainly appears that most religious people do indeed believe in a personal God.  Even if the contemplative and mystical traditions are at the “core” of those religions, most adherents haven’t gotten the message.  I’m actually far more familiar with various mystical traditions than with mainstream religions.  I still find mysticism fascinating, even now as an atheist, but it just doesn’t seem to be very influential or popular.

I’ve never met a single Mormon who wouldn’t strongly disagree with your portrayal of their religion.  I’m not saying they don’t exist, but they are very rare and/or very quiet.  My basic problem with your arguments is that you are defining “real” Christianity and “real” Mormonism and “real” atheism in ways that very few self-described Christians or Mormons or atheists would accept.  You can’t reasonably expect us (or them) to accept your definitions.

Yes, because if someone isn’t religious they MUST be depressed and negative, right?  What utter bullshit.