Scratch

New ARIS survey will show that US atheists/agnostics have nearly doubled since 2001

The next wave of the American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS)will be released on March 9 2009 - but we've got a sneak preview of the non-religious data! ARIS is the most comprehensive and reliable survey of religion in the USA (surveying 50,000 people), and two sets of data have been published so far - from 1991 and 2001. The ARIS team last repeated the survey in 2008 and have been crunching the data since - the report will be available here in just over a week.

The data are going to be very interesting - the 2001 survey was a bombshell because it revealed just how many Americans are switching off religion. What will the 2008 data show? Well, if you drill down at the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society there's a presentation with a few of the key numbers. So here's a sneaky peek at them!

Trends are what's important - is America becoming more secular? Comparing the numbers with 1991 and 2001 reveals all...

In 1991, There were 14 million who did not count themselves as belonging to any religion. By 2001, that had mushroomed to 29 million. The past seven years has seen another 3 million abandon religious identity (or, alternatively, 3 million religious elderly pass away, and 3 million secular youth replace them in the statistics). A small gain.

The US population has also grown over that time, but the % figures still show a similar story. Huge growth in the 1990s, followed by a smaller growth afterwards.

Having no religion is not the same as being a non-believer. A common claim is that, although the number of people without a religious identity is increasing, this does not reflect an increase in atheism or agnosticism. Instead, these people without religion are just dissatisfied with the current offerings, and so are going their own way. In 2002 Hout and Fischer, using data from the General Social Survey (which stretches back over decades), concluded that:

    Religious skepticism proved to be an unlikely explanation [of the increase in non-religious]. Most people with no preference hold conventional religious beliefs, despite their alienation from organized religion. In fact, these "unchurched believers" made up most of the increase in the 'no religion' preferences.

The new data from ARIS show a different story since 2002. Take a look at the number of self-declared atheists and agnostics (I'm adding in to this group the small number of people who call themselves humanists). These went from 1.2 million in 1991 to 1.9 million in 2001, and then shot up to 3.5 million in 2008. Although there's only been a small growth in the numbers of people with 'no religion', there's been a doubling of people prepared to admit to an interviewer that they are atheist or agnostic. 3 million new non-religious, but 1.6 million new atheists/agnostics.

The graph shows these numbers in percentage terms. It's a striking picture, especially when compared with the changing numbers of 'non-religious'.

In the 2001 ARIS survey, only one in five people who disagreed strongly or somewhat that "God exists" were prepared to call themselves either atheist or agnostic. We won't have those data for 2008 until the final report is published in just over a week. But I suspect that the nonbelievers are coming out of the closet. It seems that perhaps the Out Campaign might be having some effect. Atheism is finally starting to become socially acceptable in the USA.

Not sure what any of this has to do with Scratch...but I'm moving it to Inspiration and More for now.

Go Humanism!
I personally think that Science and Humanist principles applied universally can outdo many of the things claimed by religion at this point. Better health care and technology doesn't give people life after death, but it instead gives people longer life, which I think would be a lot better. Humanism also provides an Ethical "code" of beliefs to guide people in what is ethically right and what is ethically immoral, whereas religions will start wars over whether someone believes that like "bob was created first" or "joe was created first" or something like that whereas Humanists have Ethical and Philosophical beliefs that are almost all completely unique and changing ideas about what they believe is crucial and it can't survive at all just thinking the same thing for the whole time, it HAS to have variety. and they wouldn't fight wars over whether they believe in String Theory or the Multiverse or if they don't, everyone wants to work together. Of course even though it is CALLED Humanism it doesn't put Humans as Gods, and it has respect for all living things and nature and doesn't put Humans Higher than other animals (well some may argue Humans are a little bit higher forms of life forms than a virus but still...) and we go out into outer space, reality is much more amazing and awesome than any story in a book, Violence is bad, atheists can use reason but they aren't emotionless robots that will do anything if it will be beneficial in the short-term for them. They also happen to have the benefit that what they "believe in" is REAL and many other religions are NOT. but I respect Taoism and Such religions, they teach peace mostly but still HI!!!
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^^^-no implications connotations blahblahblahhblattations or anything like that just wanted to use the blocks. 

i used to be aethiest. now im agnostic. so?

Why not?  Plenty of people have created scratch projects publicising their religious beliefs and trying to convert others.  Discussion on the general trend of conversion thus has a place in the "inspiration" forum, as it may inspire people to create projects explaining their views.

Blade-Edge wrote:

as far as i'm concerened this is spam

also who cares?
being an atheist wont affect your programming skills

How fortunate, then, that your opinion as to what is spam and what isn't counts for so little on these forums.

how fortunate that we get comebacks like these
How fortunate, then, that your opinion as to what is spam and what isn't counts for so little on these forums.
lololol

I agree with FantasyTales, religion is a choice, let people abandon their religion if they want.

One could say that about almost any topic in this particular area of the forums.

A fallacious viewpoint with no basis in fact.

/not unlike religion, in some respects 

Blade-Edge wrote:

as far as i'm concerened this is spam

also who cares?
being an atheist wont affect your programming skills

So things like Orly the Owl has more a place in scratch than a a totally unbiased post discussing recent changes in certain religious bodies. In the first post of this thread there is not a single thing said that is not fact!

illusionist wrote:

This is NOT a scratch related forum. It does not belong in Scratch.

and the aforementioned Orly the Owl is scratch related?

FantasyTales wrote:

but seriously religion is a choice, you cant force your opinion on others

if only this were true, throughout history almost all religious entities have started religious wars in an attempt to convert people to their faith.

im agnostic. so? and i used to be athiest. so? why do you care... and if you dont like my belief then dont go on scratch