More Poll Data on Unbelief

Given the Poll Data that was recently released where we learn 15% of Americans have no religion, former team member "d" cataloged other Poll Data in the last few years on unbelief:


4 comments:

Jason Long said...

So what's the consensus here? To me it looks like maybe 5% oppose the idea of a deity, 10% don't know, and another 10% just want nothing to do with it. A lot of work to go...

Joseph Hinman (Metacrock) said...

you are wrong about the Poll data. Only 3% are atheists. The rest (12, not 15) are people who don't belong to a religious group but that do beileve in God.

this is true in several studies. You can't just sight one about about four others at least disagree. Some of these are very major, such as the Pew poll of last year.

goprairie said...

J.L. - you are mixing up data from separate parts of the surveys.
There is a "belonging" part that asks what group people identify with. In that question set about specific religions, where people identified a type of religion as a specific denomination or 'None' or 'Other' or 'Don't Know, a full 15% chose 'None' over 'other' or "don't Know'. 'Other' was around 4% and DK was around 5%.

Then there was a "Beliefs" portion of the survey:
In a SEPARATE set of questions:
"Based on their stated beliefs rather than their religious identification in 2008, 70% of Americans believe in a personal God, roughly 12% of Americans are atheist (no God) or agnostic (unknowable or unsure), and another 12% are deistic (a higher power but no personal God)."
So the 12 % Diests do NOT come out of the 15% who answered "None" as these were separate parts of the survey entirely. In the part where 12% asnwered as Deist, another separate 12% answered spcifically atheist or agnostic.
Go to the actual survey report, and not the blogs or news reporters' versions.
It is impossible to tell where the overlap is in the "Belonging" answers and the "Belief" answers as you are attempting incorrectly to do.

ZAROVE said...

I'm afraid I agree with Hinman. Just because somethign is classified as "No religion" doesn't mean that its automatically Atheistic.