Tuesday, June 24, 2008

We are tolerant, dammit!

Survey Shows U.S. Religious Tolerance

I posted just the other day about misconceptions about Americans' beliefs. Here's another survey showing that Americans are not the religious dogmatists we are often portrayed as by the traditional media. Pew just came out with a survey contradicting many long held beliefs regarding religions and spiritual attitudes. From the NYTimes article:

"...The report, the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, reveals a broad trend toward tolerance and an ability among many Americans to hold beliefs that might contradict the doctrines of their professed faiths..."

So people have a healthy attitude when confronting contradictions in their one faiths. But it gets better:

...70 percent of Americans affiliated with a religion or denomination said they agreed that “many religions can lead to eternal life,” including majorities among Protestants and Catholics...

Now wait a second! Next they're going to claim that vast majority of us are not breathers of fire and brimstone...

...The findings seem to undercut the conventional wisdom that the more religiously committed people are, the more intolerant they are, scholars who reviewed the survey said...

I wonder who is responsible for shoving that 'conventional wisdom' down our throats for the last couple of decades? Could it be...the traditional media!

“...It’s not that Americans don’t believe in anything,” said Michael Lindsay, assistant director of the Center on Race, Religion and Urban Life at Rice University. “It’s that we believe in everything. We aren’t religious purists or dogmatists...”

Wow, that's a truly refreshing factoid. It's hard for me to believe that this is something new. I know that the last George Bush presidency has been a hard lesson in proving the titanic mistake of letting theo-cons run this country. Yet, changes in religious attitudes tend to morph slowly. I just have the strong suspicion, that whenever the traditional media has claimed to be surveying our religious and spiritual attitudes--everything from Creationism to 'separation of church-state' issues--what they have really been doing is 'push polling'. No! The traditional media pushing a dominionist right-wing agenda! Who'd a thunk?

Now here's a part that might have some bearing on all us Wiccans, Pagans, Atheists, and Scientists out there:

...According to that report, more than a quarter of adult Americans have left the faith of their childhood to join another religion or no religion. The survey indicated that the group that had the greatest net gain was the unaffiliated, accounting for 16 percent of American adults...Like the overwhelming majority of Americans, 70 percent of the unaffiliated said they believed in God, including one of every five people who identified themselves as atheist and more than half of those who identified as agnostic.


So, 1 in 5 people who call themselves 'Atheist' believes in God! OK, now I'm confused! Maybe I need a refresher course in what being an Atheist means:

“..What does atheist mean? It may mean they don’t believe in God, or it could be that they are hostile to organized religion,” Mr. Green said. “A lot of these unaffiliated people, by some measures, are fairly religious, and then there are those who are affiliated with a religion but don’t believe in God and identify instead with history or holidays or communities...”

It's fascinating how Atheism is evolving. It may not necessarily imply (or require) a disbelief in God. A healthy "hostility to organized religion" is all it takes. I think that's something that many Wiccan's and Pagans can get behind.

Here's the direct Pew link: US Religious Landscape Survey.

2 comments:

Hypatia said...

Hey Gene,

This poll had some heartening aspects and depressing aspects for me.

I was very glad that such a large proportion of religious people, even evangelicals, who believe that their religion is not the only way to "salvation".

I was depressed that there weren't more questions delving into the more subtle aspects of atheism, agnosticism, deism, theism, and other points of religious subtlety.

I think more people would fit into those categories than is really represented by the simplistic questions. Heck, many people don't even know the basic differences enough to know what to call themselves. Agnostic originally meant that one thinks that the divine is not humanly unprovable, but doesn't make any comment on the agnostic's personal belief in the existence of a deity one way or another.

Having grown up as an atheist in a Unitarian Universalist / Buddhist home with Quaker and Episcopalian influences, I was convinced that the future of religion in the world would be a UU type diversity and tolerance. With everyone actually thinking carefully about their dogma. I'm not quite that naive anymore, but maybe this poll shows a slight flickering of that. Certainly more so that the crazy folks down here in the Land of Dobson Family Values (shudder).

Rachel

genexs said...

Hey Gene,

Wow! Hypatia posts a comment to my blog!!! :)

I was depressed that there weren't more questions delving into the more subtle aspects of atheism, agnosticism, deism, theism, and other points of religious subtlety.

Those issues are a concern to many of us. As we are still vastly outnumbered by main stream religions, polling orgs
have an excuse (non-significant results) for not analyzing alternative religions. However, recent data points to about 1.4 million of us (by 'us', I mean NeoPagans and Wiccans; we are classified as 'New Age'by Pew), so I suppose we are approaching the point of statistical significance.

I think more people would fit into those categories than is really
represented by the simplistic questions. Heck, many people don't even
know the basic differences enough to know what to call themselves.
Agnostic originally meant that one thinks that the divine is not humanly
unprovable, but doesn't make any comment on the agnostic's personal
belief in the existence of a deity one way or another.


For me, whether God exists or not is a terribly uninteresting question. Besides, contrary to the screeds dominating most Atheist blogs, there's little evidence someone's beliefs in such matters says very much about them.

Having grown up as an atheist in a Unitarian Universalist / Buddhist
home with Quaker and Episcopalian influences, I was convinced that the
future of religion in the world would be a UU type diversity and
tolerance. With everyone actually thinking carefully about their dogma.
I'm not quite that naive anymore, but maybe this poll shows a slight
flickering of that. Certainly more so that the crazy folks down here in
the Land of Dobson Family Values (shudder).


The UU's seem very cool. You must have had an interesting upbringing. I'd like to get to know UU's better. Like you, I'm surprised by the near across the board tolerance expressed by people of many different faiths. I also agree this poll offers us some hope.

cheers,
Gene