Thinking about the Growing Number of Nones

By Gary Berg-Cross

“’Nones’ on the Rise” was the title of the recent Pew Forum poll on Religion and Public Life. The simple statistics was that 1-in-5 adults surveyed had no religious affiliation. Even more ( third of adults) of respondents under 30 report having no religious affiliated today. Room for the Secular Student Alliance to grow. These are the highest percentages ever found in Pew Research Center polling and one can see a trend. The Christian Post summarized the implication as: “The Latest Pew Survey: Christianity Losing, Secularism Winning.” Those identifying with Protestantism was down 5%. What’s the turn off?  Perhaps not a deep study of religion’s tenets but a practical disgust. Most of the unaffiliated say religious organizations are too concerned with money, power, politics and rules. But there are lots of buts. Sure the 20% of adults (46 million or so) include some atheists.  More than 13 million of Americans are self-described atheists and agnostics. But that is only about 6% of the U.S. public. One may be a None and not an atheist.  One might fancy crystals.  Only 12 percent of the "nones" identify themselves as atheist. The largest category (13.9 percent) of the religiously unaffiliated are those who say they are "nothing in particular." What are the rest? What does the survey tells us about the Nones?    “Two-thirds of them say they believe in God (68%). More than half say they often feel a deep connection with nature and the earth (58%), while more than a third classify themselves as “spiritual” but not “religious” (37%), and one-in-five (21%) say they pray every day.”

Just because organized religion isn’t important to nones doesn’t mean that ideas of meaning and belonging traditionally identified with religion isn’t important.

But only 10% report that they are actively looking for a religion “just right” for them. It seems that modern society has unhooked some folks from the traditional and organized religion.  Maybe they can find meaning and community elsewhere. There is a range of substitutes and perhaps a friendly community of Humanists would be one. It might be nice to include them in our conversations and see if free inquiry, critical thinking, an appreciation for science , humanist principles/values and healthy skepticism have some appeal. People like Chris Stedman, Assistant Humanist Chaplain at Harvard is already reaching out with some plans from his point of view for a national discussion on religion. We might want to broaden that a bit and hope for some more assimilation into the secular community.

We know something about None’s political leanings too:

“the religiously unaffiliated are an increasingly important segment of the electorate. In the 2008 presidential election, they voted as heavily for Barack Obama as white evangelical Protestants did for John McCain. More than six-in-ten religiously unaffiliated registered voters are Democrats (39%) or lean toward the Democratic Party (24%). They are about twice as likely to describe themselves as political liberals than as conservatives, and solid majorities support legal abortion (72%) and same-sex marriage (73%). In the last five years, the unaffiliated have risen from 17% to 24% of all registered voters who are Democrats or lean Democratic.”

Another trend to consider.

Image Credit

Pew Poll: http://www.pewforum.org/Unaffiliated/nones-on-the-rise.aspx

Getting the Word out on the Non-religious Trend among Millennials

by Gary Berg-Cross

A new Pew Research Center poll of millennials (those born after 1980)finds that 31 percent doubt the existence of God, and that figure has more than doubled in just five years among Americans age 30 and below.Jesse Galef, Secular Student Alliance, promoting atheism and non-religious views on college campuses spoke to this: “Our generation is causing a fundamental shift in how society will see religion,”

SSA now has 357 affiliates on American campuses - up from just 81 such affiliates in 2007.

Missed the CNN discussion with Secular Student Alliance's Jesse Galef about Millenial's doubts about God?

It aired on CNN recently and you may enjoy how Jesse gets his talking points out in the face of questions framed about atheist attempts to convert people. For example he had to deal with the vague, framing hypotheical:

“Some Christians MIGHT argue that because such groups are in high schools, you’re sort of indoctrinating young people at a time when, you know, it’s not proper because they’re not really old enough to handle questions like that.”

There are quire a few traps in here and the emotional word on Indoctrination but Jesse did a ood job of sticking to message.  A good sign for this generation and good for their fund raising effort.

 Well for Some Atheists who may say that the religious is doing some form of indoctrination on kids who aren't old enough to handle it.

The Anger, Frustration, Disappointment and Disgust Spectrum

by Gary Berg-Cross

Speakers at the recent Reason Rally provided a bushel of views on current topics often from different perspectives and with different tones. At one end some focused on a positive, diplomatic tone making an easily palliative case for more reason in our affairs. This plays well in the mainstream media, or at least it can. Others employed a humorous-ironic approach that makes for good sound bites, but ridicule and mockery may make some religious fundamentalists more entrenched in their beliefs. Still others like, Greta Christina & new Atheist Richard Dawkins were at the more challenging end. They touch on anger and confrontation in part. These 2 contrasting soft, strategic-diplomatic versus hard-confrontational stances represent an important difference of opinion in the atheist/non-theist movement. It’s been evident on this Blog on discussion such as the God Virus, where Edd Doerr argued that we humanists need to work with a broad spectrum of people, some of whom bear assorted religious labels. From his experience a key to the long term vision of a more humanistic world is a more diplomatic approach since you will never persuade anyone to your point of view by ridiculing them or treating them with contempt. What he stresses is:

“found in these words: strategy, strategy, strategy, timing, sequence, framing, prioritizing. A bull in a china shop approach, like that of Madalyn O'Hair is what is really counterproductive.”

Matt Goldstein (Explicit Atheist), commenting on this blog, is more like the Dawkins and Christina end, which sees a need not to accept irrational beliefs. Dawkins has put it thusly: “It is not a good strategy to accept intolerance because it is widespread.” We can argue about things like intolerance without insulting
the believers. This comes across as a bit more reasoned than Rally organizer David Silverman’s loud, naked call for "zero tolerance" for anyone who disagrees with or insults atheism. His simple message is, "Stand your ground!"

It was interesting to see how the talks at the Rally (and later follow ups in the media such as Up with Chris Hayes) addressed these alternative ideas. Greta Christina, prominent atheist & LGBT issues blogger & frequent Secular Student Alliance and the Center for Inquiry speaker, takes a confrontational stance, but like Matt has some nuance. On NPR she said, “I’m not sure it is to atheists’ benefit to always present a kinder, gentler face.”

Her talk took, on what seemed a personal challenge to explain to the Public as a whole why exactly atheists seem angry and outraged at times. This was in effect an abstract from her new book Why Are You Atheists So Angry? 99 Things That Piss Off The Godless. Some in the media see this as a non-starter, but if they paid attention to her talk you can see that she argued smoothly and pivoted from a list of complaints to an explanation
for the deeper feelings - most non-theist’s “anger” is less about religious belief than injustice. She argued, in paraphrase, that the public misunderstands the basis of our nuanced motivation:

“We atheists aren't angry because we're selfish, or bitter, or joyless. We atheists are angry because we have compassion. We atheists are angry because we have a sense of justice. We see millions get harmed by religious culture and our hearts go out to them. We are motivated to do something about it. That’s not because there is something wrong with us, it is because there is something right with us. “

Dawkins, as always is eloquent (“Evolution is not just true, it's beautiful”), but like Hitchens feels it important if not necessary to take a strong stand and organize the troops against are real dangers that flow from some outrageous beliefs. He encourages people not just to take intellectual issue with religious teachings, and accept them innocently but to show "contempt" for it and to "ridicule" religious belief. But like Greta he deepens the ideas noting that:

“He doesn’t despise religious people. I despise what they stand for.”

By this he might mean some of the positions of interference and counter productivity that Greta lists such as fighting the teaching of evolution.

Certainly this debate and discussion will go on and there is merit in the contrasting positions. One point that I would make builds on Greta discussion on the roots of what she called atheist anger. I see it as more than an anger emotion. When some religious person uses words to an ancient book to castigate a group I have many thoughts as well as emotions. And there is a spectrum of them depending on what I think. I am disappointed of course and hope for progress over time. I may be terrified that people actually believe the things they claim to believe and the implications of this based on movements. I may be disgusted with their choices and mockery of things like evolutionary and climate science. Rather than angry I’m often just plain sad about the state of people’s epistemological affairs of perception pushing aside reality.