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:
- Feb 2009 CUNY ARIS, 12.3% atheist + agnostic
- Apr 2008 Harris, 28% "not religious", 14% "not at all religious" [table 6]
- Nov. 2007 Harris, 18% atheists + agnostics
- Nov 2007 various by Zuckerman and Paul, "America's disbelievers...number 30 million, ...far outnumber American Jews, Muslims and Mormons combined."
- Aug 2007 Pew, nonreligious: 16.1%, with 4% atheist + agnostic and 12.1% generally unaffiliated
- Mar 2007 Newsweek, 10% "no religion", 6% atheist + agnostic
- 1972-2006 GSS Data, 14.4% "not religious" [here], 6.1% atheist [here]
- Dec 2006 Harris, 14% agnostic, 4% atheist, 6% "would prefer not to say"
- Sept 2006 Baylor U., 10.8% "religious nones," 5.2% atheists
- 2005 Adherents.com global data, 16% of people globally are atheist, agnostic, or related
- May 2004 Pew, 16% "unaffiliated", 7.5% "secular" and 3.2% "atheist, agnostic"
- Dec 2001 CUNY ARIS, "no religion" 8% in 1990, 14% in 2001. 14.3 million in 1990, 29.4 million in 2001 (more here)
4 comments:
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...
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.
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.
I'm afraid I agree with Hinman. Just because somethign is classified as "No religion" doesn't mean that its automatically Atheistic.
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