How popular is atheism in believers?

[wolves_skeptic]

I've just finished listening to a BBC Radio 4 production of a programme called "Jon Ronson On:" It's available on iPlayer for UK residents and I'm sure if you hunted you'd find it on the file sharing networks.

This is the first in the series and it looks at "Bad News". There are some interesting stories about death but the one that really took my notice was the interview with William Lobdell who used to be the Relgious Correspondent on the LA Times. After hearing about systematic abuse of children by the priests he started started doubting his faith. This went on and on until eventually he turned atheist. He then published an article about his "conversion to atheism".

What really interested was when he spoke about the emails he received. A lot came from Christians praising him for speaking about his "doubt" and conversion. He was even supposed to have recieved an email from someone in the Vatican saying how they had lost their faith but didn't know who to turn to. He also received emails from the clergy saying the same thing. He was surprised just how many people lived the "believers life" but where actually atheists but too scared to say anything.

So this leads me onto the point of this thread... just how popular is atheism amongst the believers of religion? Interestingly what about those people in power in the USA? There seems to be a thing about the USA not being ready for an atheist president yet maybe they've already had one, maybe they even have one now? Maybe the talk about God is done because they are scared of the public backlash? Then it starts you thinking... what about all those people who "believe"? Do they really believe? Are they saying it because they are so into that life that they believe the admission of atheism would lose them their peers?

Thoughts?

[Civilized Worm]

Any attempt to say how many "believers" don't really believe would be baseless speculation.

[wolves_skeptic]

Any attempt to say how many "believers" don't really believe would be baseless speculation.

Yes, I know.

I was hoping to provoke a discussion on the issue. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

Like Dawkins said, atheism is a rude word. Maybe if more people come out vocally as atheists then maybe those living a lie would be more tempted to tell the truth about their atheism.

You know... provoke a debate.

Sorry.

[gumboot]

If my "believer" friends are anything to go by, all believers are actually agnostic or atheist. True conversation:

Me: So what did you put on your census form for religion?
Friend: I put Christian Protestant.
Me: Surprised Really? I didn't know you were a Christian. You don't go to church.
Friend: I know.
Me: But you believe in Jesus and all that?
Friend: Well, not really.
Me: Do you believe in God? An afterlife?
Friend: I dunno. There might be something.
Me: So why did you put Christian Protestant on your census?
Friend: My parents were Protestants.
Me: So?
Friend: I was baptised as a protestant.
Me: Yeah, when you were a week old...

Honestly the majority of my friends seem to read the "What religious association are you?" question as "What religious association were your parents when you were born?".

[dahduh]

Any attempt to say how many "believers" don't really believe would be baseless speculation.

I have to disagree; even if there is little data this is a good question.

Anecdotal evidence: I have a couple of devout friends, and about half have at some time spontaneously expressed doubt about the existence of God. But what keeps them going is the fact that their church is a big part of their family and social lives, and they are embedded in a network of relations that keep them in the faith.

So while I get the impression that doubt is quite common, I don't see many doubting believers becoming actual atheists unless they have some similar support group to turn to. BUT, if conforming to the social norm is the main factor supporting belief, it does mean that we could end up in a kind of unstable 'supercritical' state in which, once private doubt is widespread, some event or fluctuation could cause a relatively rapid transition from a mostly religious society to a mostly irreligious society.

[DanishDynamite]

I've just finished listening to a BBC Radio 4 production of a programme called "Jon Ronson On:" It's available on iPlayer for UK residents and I'm sure if you hunted you'd find it on the file sharing networks.

This is the first in the series and it looks at "Bad News". There are some interesting stories about death but the one that really took my notice was the interview with William Lobdell who used to be the Relgious Correspondent on the LA Times. After hearing about systematic abuse of children by the priests he started started doubting his faith. This went on and on until eventually he turned atheist. He then published an article about his "conversion to atheism".

What really interested was when he spoke about the emails he received. A lot came from Christians praising him for speaking about his "doubt" and conversion. He was even supposed to have recieved an email from someone in the Vatican saying how they had lost their faith but didn't know who to turn to. He also received emails from the clergy saying the same thing. He was surprised just how many people lived the "believers life" but where actually atheists but have been too scared to say anything.

So this leads me onto the point of this thread... just how popular is atheism amongst the believers of religion? Interestingly what about those people in power in the USA? There seems to be a thing about the USA not being ready for an atheist president yet maybe they've already had one, maybe they even have one now? Maybe the talk about God is done because they are scared of the public backlash? Then it starts you thinking... what about all those people who "believe"? Do they really believe? Are they saying it because they are so into that life that they believe the admission of atheism would lose them their peers?

Thoughts?
Most US presidents have been non-believers.

"Religion is the opium of the masses."

[Gord_in_Toronto]

The trick to staying religious is -- DON'T THINK ABOUT IT.

If you do, you might loose your faith.

[Macoy]

The trick to staying religious is -- DON'T THINK ABOUT IT.

If you do, you might loose your faith.

Yes, I was religious right up to the time I started thinking about it.

I've met people who have admitted to adopting a religion in order to "fit in".
If enough of their group are doing that, what are they "fitting in" with?

[Susan Gerbic]

There is a strong reason to stay in religion when you are a becoming an atheist. Because of the family/social ties. Many stories (and partly my own experience) is that you would be in the dog house if you admitted your lack of faith. It just depends on your family relationships, many social occasions, Christmas, Weddings, Baptisms ect center around church.

I remember a Jewish man I met, he was a big time atheist, but continued attending temple because of social reasons. I suppose this is common.

I am trying to get together a social skeptic group here in Monterey County, the few people I have met all say, they feel alone here, and didn't know there were others like them.

Susan

[NoisyAstronomer]

Sheesh, I don't know. My main experience with believers was my Catholic community growing up. I doubt that many of them actually cared about the teachings or morality or anything actually important to day-to-day life. But dammit, they believed in God and the Trinity and Mary and all that! That seemed backwards to me.

[devnull]

I think most people would agree that atheism is probably more common than the statistics show, but despite the anecdotes there really is no solid evidence as to how many theists are actually atheists in disguise......

[wolves_skeptic]

But what keeps them going is the fact that their church is a big part of their family and social lives, and they are embedded in a network of relations that keep them in the faith.

I remember reading a great article in "The Big Issue" many moons ago which was about people who had left the Jehoviah's Witnesses. Because they are encouraged to have no friends whatsoever outside of the faith it meant that the decision to leave meant making a whole new group of friends. They said it was hard but worse for their kids who had also been forced to only have friends in the religion and once out their friends were told not to play with them. They got through it in the end but it is interesting that there may be many many more in all religions who feel that same way.

So while I get the impression that doubt is quite common, I don't see many doubting believers becoming actual atheists unless they have some similar support group to turn to. BUT, if conforming to the social norm is the main factor supporting belief, it does mean that we could end up in a kind of unstable 'supercritical' state in which, once private doubt is widespread, some event or fluctuation could cause a relatively rapid transition from a mostly religious society to a mostly irreligious society.

That's what I think. If doubt is widespread then Dawkins is certainly onto something with his statements about being proud to be an atheist. If as atheists we are proud of our lack of beliefs then maybe it will make it easier for those stuck in a lie to come out. It's like gay people trying to encourage other gay people to come out. :)

Say it... I'm atheist and I'm proud.

[wolves_skeptic]

I doubt that many of them actually cared about the teachings or morality or anything actually important to day-to-day life.

I've found that. In fact, I know people who "claim" to have a belief but spend six days a week treating other people like absolute dirt and being really rude and disrespectful (as well as hateful, intollerant and lacking forgiveness) But they seem to think that because they go to Church on a Sunday that that's alright.

Or maybe they are just stressed because they know they are living a lie and that stress is coming out as rudeness... who knows?

[gumboot]

You'd probably find there's far more agnostic "believers" than atheist "believers".

[H3LL]

Surprisingly, PTerry approached the subject rather well in Small Gods.

Believers believe in the church/religion and not the god.

I think he has a point - as he so often does.



"The turtle moves".

.

[FireGarden]

Surprisingly, PTerry approached the subject rather well in Small Gods.

What's surprising?

Believers believe in the church/religion and not the god.

There are certianly some like that.
A family friend suggested to me that I simply go about saying that I believe in God and start praying. Actually believing wasn't important to him. The experience of being in the community was.

He being Muslim (or calling himself that), I told him that the Quran calls such people hypocrites and condemns them. According to him: only if they abandon the community.

That's what it's about to some people: community.

As for gauging how prevelant this is.... That's anyone's guess.

[Rocko]

Anecdotally, I went to a monastic boarding school where religion was seriously, relentlessly drummed into us. Most of my friends from there, nearly 20 years on, still describe themselves as believers, and go to church regularly etc.

They're also out having sex with anything that moves, taking drugs - the question "what would Jesus do?" isn't one they ever ask themselves - religion appears totally compartmentalised to that hour on a sunday morning.

Most of them are just religious by default, it appears to me. I don't think any of them have put any real thought into it; it's the ones who have who no longer practice.

None of them rely on the church for community ties etc though, so I'm guessing if they did lose their faith, they'd just stop going to church and that'd be that. I can, however, visualise a situation where tolerating an hour of boredom every Sunday morning was fair recompense for what the churchgoer got in return from the community.

Indeed, I strongly suspected that a couple of the monks at my school were in exactly that position - they had lost faith, but staying in a place where they didn't have to worry about money/jobs/life was easier than admitting so and leaving. I have zero evidence to support that other than my gut instinct, however.

[leon_heller]

In one of the Inspector Morse episodes someone refers to a bishop and Morse says sardonically "Is he the one that doesn't believe in God!"

Leon

[PingOfPong]

Anecdotally, I went to a monastic boarding school where religion was seriously, relentlessly drummed into us. Most of my friends from there, nearly 20 years on, still describe themselves as believers, and go to church regularly etc.

They're also out having sex with anything that moves, taking drugs - the question "what would Jesus do?" isn't one they ever ask themselves - religion appears totally compartmentalised to that hour on a sunday morning.





I grew up in a baptist community and I too noticed that religion had absolutely no bearing on morality. They even held a service for us kids where the topic was "Do as we say and not as we do". That always bothered me. It seemed that the biggest sinners had the strongest faith.

When I started giving some serious thought to religion the doubts started flowing. I lingered for many years in the church before I finally gave up and announced myself as an atheist to anyone who asked. Friends and family told me that hell fire awaits me. I told them my doubts are fair and reasonable. If God is going to burn me for it then he isn't worthy of praise.

[Delvo]

...Jehoviah's Witnesses. Because they are encouraged to have no friends whatsoever outside of the faith it meant that the decision to leave meant making a whole new group of friends.If that's true, then Jehovah's Witnesses must have split into distinct sects whose differences are not accounted for when referring to them all by that categorical name (a bit like a generic "Baptist" or "Protestant"). I had a JW co-worker whom you would never have known was one until religion came up in a chat at the office. He had no problem befriending us. I also notice that he never preached at us, but I found out that he did do the door-to-door thing outside of work hours. (It seemed odd to me because he had a quiet, introverted personality, but then I remembered that there seems to always be one who talks and one who doesn't, so he must be the latter on his team. :D) Maybe what's going on is that they're not to think of friends as people to preach at, and not to think of the people they preach at as friends. And of all the weird/creepy things I've heard of about them and their religion, that would be the weirdest/creepiest.

A family friend suggested to me that I simply go about saying that I believe in God and start praying. Actually believing wasn't important to him. The experience of being in the community was.In a conversation about the fact that I had no girlfriend or wife and no expectation or intention to have one in the future, the person I was talking to actually told me that I should join a church just to meet women, and that in her church a lot of single women were there just to meet men. This actually makes some sense in the context of looking for personality types you won't find at bars and dance clubs, but it still means anybody who's doing that is being dishonest.

I grew up in a baptist community and I too noticed that religion had absolutely no bearing on morality. They even held a service for us kids where the topic was "Do as we say and not as we do". That always bothered me. It seemed that the biggest sinners had the strongest faith.I think the "I'm weak and a sinner" thing is easy to turn into an excuse. I recall a particular incident in which someone was talking about his own weakness and I kept saying "if you think that's a sin, then choose not to do it", and he'd just go back to saying that the fact that he did it anyway proved human fallibility and weak sinfulness... and we were talking about something that I, the unreligious one who didn't even think of the subject as a sin at all, didn't have any trouble resisting and deciding not to do.

When I started giving some serious thought to religion the doubts started flowing. I lingered for many years in the church before I finally gave up and announced myself as an atheist to anyone who asked.Since joining this forum and seeing other people's stories about "coming out", I've been wondering lately what I would have done if I'd been in the situation I was in for another few years. From the start through fifth grade, I went to school at a private Lutheran school which included religious classes in the curriculum, and to church and "Sunday school" every Sunday. My parents weren't big on religion, but sent us there for two reasons: to keep the peace with my father's aggressively religious parents (who had had a role in founding that church among several others), and so we'd learn to read despite living in a public school district that was monkeying around with some stupid non-phonetic teaching idea (essentially pretending that English works like Chinese).

This school, not only associated with the church but actually built in so it was all one building and some of the offices and staff and other resources were the same, included grades 0-8. In eighth grade, being done with this school and ready to leave (often to an affiliated religious private high school) was to be signaled by a ceremony called "[URL=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation#Lutheran_view]confirmation[URL]", in which the student was supposed to confirm in front of the whole church, supposedly of his/her own volition, his/her belief in the religion's principles and acceptance of Jesus and such. But I already knew years ahead of time that it wouldn't be what I really thought or how I really felt. How I would have handled that never really came up, though, because I transferred to the public schools starting in sixth grade.

There's no doubt that I wouldn't have stood in front of the church with my classmates and lied that I was a good little Lutheran, or even stood quietly and gone through the movements on stage and let the assumption go by unchallenged. The truth would have come out one way or another. One way could have been by telling the school staff about it in the months leading up to the ceremony and quietly not being involved in the preparations for the event (after which I'm not sure they would have let me stay in school the rest of the year and given me credit for even the secular classes I'd taken). But I might have been tempted to fake it long enough to actually go into the ceremony and then announce it to all in that setting for shock value and "see the looks on their faces" chuckles, when asked a question like "Do you accept/believe...", by simply answering "No, I do not".

[Nogbad]

The trick to staying religious is -- DON'T THINK ABOUT IT.

If you do, you might loose your faith.

My Damascus Road in reverse began with thinking about it all, specifically at a youth rally where some YWAMers sang "I ain't no kin to a monkey". I suddenly felt uncomfortable and stopped singing along.

Thereafter the more I thought the less credible it all became.

Damn that thinking thing!

On the plus side being an Atheist in the UK is no big deal.

[Susan Gerbic]

In one of the Inspector Morse episodes someone refers to a bishop and Morse says sardonically "Is he the one that doesn't believe in God!"

I remember this one. He didn't get a lot of reaction as if that was kinda normal. I wondered if this was a British thing? Religious careers for Atheists?

on the other hand, I want to mention that there is an interesting blog where you can post your story of how you lost religion. http://iam.comingoutgodless.com
I love reading the stories of people who were completely fundie and then got over it and why.

Susan

[kittynh]

Well a lot of people LIE to be accepted.

I was watching the new Jerry Andrus video. It's funny how people said "I'm an agnostic" more so than "I'm an atheist". I mean they don't believe in a God, but then they don't believe that the question of God can be totally answered by science.

I'm cool with that.

I've had the other situation. Where, from a science standpoint I'm "well yeah I can see your point that there isn't a God"....but...I still believe.

I have too much respect for my atheist friends to "fake" being an atheist to please them, but I do enjoy their challenges becaues I feel if you can't defend your belief, then it isn't a belief at all.

A LOT of Xians fake it, because once you say the A word...people start to judge you.

[bobrayner]

Off on a tangent (just a little), one of my favourite statistics is that 72% of people in the UK told the last census that they were christian, but only 6% actually get out of bed on any given sunday morning and go to church.

[Damien Evans]

Off on a tangent (just a little), one of my favourite statistics is that 72% of people in the UK told the last census that they were christian, but only 6% actually get out of bed on any given sunday morning and go to church.

Also one I read in the papers not so long ago: More Catholics go to church in England than Protestants do.

Does this mean we can have the Stuarts back?:D