Originally published at: Number of Americans who believe in God is at its lowest since at least 1944 | Boing Boing
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Interesting choice of image to accompany the article
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Finally some good news.
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The Invisible Bearded Sky Man™ in Their various flavours hasn’t really done a bang-up job in recent years. And They seem headed back to setting the stage for the results that got Them those low ratings back in 1944.
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I really question how many of those who profess to believe in God actually have any real idea what they believe in
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Hmmm. I also don’t currently believe in America which creates a bit of a dilemma.
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This is one of those questions where the results swing wildly depending on how you word the question. Very few people will describe themselves as atheists, for example, because of the stigma around that word. However if you probe specifics of peoples’ beliefs, the overlap with basic atheism is very very high. If you exclude people who say yes to “belief in god” in order to account for that vague feeling that humans are all wired to have that is often described as “spirituality”, then the atheist count gets extremely high indeed. Most non-religious people just don’t think that much about their beliefs and when pressed will knee-jerk an answer in line with cultural norms.
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Well, He’s been dead since 1882, so I guess that tracks.
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I find that 28% rather interesting, given that it doesn’t seem to correspond to any widely standardized belief system that’s loud enough to have attracted attention; and so more likely to be an organic response rather than someone who believes they are giving the socially appropriate answer.
Your atheists, deists, and animists, along with the fuzzily ‘spiritual’, are less likely to say that god takes appropriately formatted verbal requests, while even the less overtly snake-handling sort of monotheists tend to claim a god that, at least in principle, has intervention within its power(even if they prefer to remain vague on why really blatant miracles are widely reported in early texts and noticeably rare on ubiquitous cameraphones).
Anyone have an idea where that pretty substantial number of people is coming from? Am I underestimating the prevalence in belief in a listener among other-than-standard-theists? Is the attempt to paper over the idea that divine intervention is possible but you never seem to get any not going so well?
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God: Died over 100 years ago, had his teachings distorted by fascists to promote their brand of hate.
Nietzsche: Died over 100 years ago, had his teachings distorted by fascists to promote their brand of hate.
Is God Nietzsche?
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Since Christianity seems to be a thin skin for white fascism and terrorism, I’d say this is promising.
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Are you saying it was a solo murder/suicide!? 
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Then why is fighting against coercion a big deal in Anarchism?
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This is the only God I believe in.
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“Up until 2011, at least 90% of people in the US CLAIMED they were believers when asked.”
FTFY
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They know what they believe (even if they haven’t thought through the ramifications of those beliefs) - people of a particular faith just don’t all believe the same things, nor do those beliefs necessarily have much to do with anything written in any version the Christian Bible. I suspect most churches are held together by a very small set of beliefs that make up the core identity - and churches not only have different positions on issues but completely different sets of issues that are core.
Specifically white, evangelical Christianity. (They were just one the biggest, noisiest factions for a while.)
Yeah, people are frequently unwilling to identify in ways that are stigmatized, and that is especially true around religious beliefs that are core to people’s social and family lives.
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Only if you are God.
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