[[link removed]]

THE NUMBER OF RELIGIOUS ‘NONES’ HAS SOARED, BUT NOT THE NUMBER OF
ATHEISTS – AND AS SOCIAL SCIENTISTS, WE WANTED TO KNOW WHY  
[[link removed]]


 

Christopher P. Scheitle, Katie Corcoran
May 6, 2024
The Conversation
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ First, what makes an individual more or less likely to identify as
an atheist? Second, what makes someone more or less likely to adopt an
atheistic worldview over time? _

Fewer people are affiliated with religion in the United States, but
that hardly means that they’re all atheists., Anthony
Bradshaw/Photographer's Choice RF via Getty Images

 

The number of individuals in the United States who do not identify as
being part of any religion
[[link removed]]
has grown dramatically in recent years, and “the nones” are now
larger than any single religious group
[[link removed]].
According to the General Social Survey, religiously unaffiliated
people represented only about 5% of the U.S. population in the 1970s.
This percentage began to increase in the 1990s
[[link removed]] and is around 30% today.

At first glance, some might assume this means nearly 1 in 3 Americans
are atheists, but that’s far from true. Indeed, only about 4% of
U.S. adults identify as an atheist
[[link removed]].

As sociologists
[[link removed]]
who study religion
[[link removed]]
in the U.S., we wanted to find out more about the gap between these
percentages and why some individuals identify as an atheist while
other unaffiliated individuals do not.

Many shades of ‘none’

The religiously unaffiliated are a diverse group. Some still attend
services, say that they are at least somewhat religious, and express
some level of belief in God – although they tend to do these things
at a lower rate than individuals who do identify with a religion
[[link removed]].

There is even diversity in how religiously unaffiliated individuals
identify themselves. When asked their religion on surveys,
unaffiliated responses include “agnostic,” “no religion,”
“nothing in particular,” “none” and so on.

Only about 17% of religiously unaffiliated people explicitly identify
as “atheist” on surveys
[[link removed]].
For the most part, atheists more actively reject religion and
religious concepts
[[link removed]]
than other religiously unaffiliated individuals.

Our recent research examines two questions related to atheism. First,
what makes an individual more or less likely to identify as an atheist
[[link removed]]? Second, what makes someone more
or less likely to adopt an atheistic worldview
[[link removed]] over time?

Beyond belief – and disbelief

Consider the first question: Who’s likely to identify as an atheist.
To answer that, we also need to think about what atheism means in the
first place.

Not all religious traditions emphasize belief in a deity
[[link removed]].
In the U.S. context, however, particularly within traditions such as
Christianity, atheism is often equated with saying that someone does
not believe in God. Yet in one of our surveys we found that among U.S.
adults who say “I do not believe in God,” only about half will
select “atheist [[link removed]]” when asked
their religious identity.

In other words, rejecting a belief in God is by no means a sufficient
condition for identifying as an atheist. So why do some individuals
who do not believe in God identify as an atheist while others do not?

Our study found [[link removed]] that there are a
number of other social forces associated with the likelihood of an
individual identifying as an atheist, above and beyond their disbelief
in God – particularly stigma.

Many Americans eye atheists with suspicion and distaste
[[link removed]]. Notably, some social
science surveys in the U.S. include questions asking about how much
tolerance people have for atheists
[[link removed]]
alongside questions about tolerance of racists
[[link removed]] and communists
[[link removed]].

This stigma means that being an atheist comes with potential social
costs, especially in certain communities. We see this dynamic play out
in our data.

Political conservatives, for instance, are less likely to identify as
an atheist even if they do not believe in God. Just under 39% of
individuals identifying as “extremely conservative” who say they
do not believe in God identify as an atheist
[[link removed]]. This compares with 72% of
individuals identifying as “extremely liberal” who say they do not
believe in God.

We argue that this likely is a function of greater negative views of
atheists in politically conservative circles
[[link removed]].

Adopting atheism

Stating that one does not believe in God, however, is the strongest
predictor of identifying as an atheist. This leads to our second
research question [[link removed]]: What
factors make someone more or less likely to lose their belief over
time?

In a second survey-based study
[[link removed]], from a different
representative sample of nearly 10,000 U.S. adults, we found that
about 6% of individuals who stated that they had some level of belief
in God at age 16 moved to saying “I do not believe in God” as an
adult.

Who falls into this group is not random.

Our analysis finds, perhaps unsurprisingly, that the stronger an
individual’s belief in God was at age 16, the less likely they are
to have adopted an atheistic worldview as an adult. For instance,
fewer than 2% of individuals who said that “I knew God really
existed and I had no doubts about it” as a teenager adopted an
atheistic worldview later on. This compares with over 20% of those who
said that “I didn’t know whether there was a God and I didn’t
believe there was any way to find out” when they were 16.

However, our analysis reveals that several other factors make one more
or less likely to adopt an atheistic worldview.

Regardless of how strong their teenage belief was, for instance,
Black, Asian and Hispanic Americans were less likely to later identify
as an atheist than white individuals. All else being equal, the odds
of individuals in these groups adopting an atheistic worldview was
about 50% to 75% less than the odds for white individuals. In part,
this could be a product of groups that already face stigma related to
their race or ethnicity being less able or willing to take on the
additional social costs of being an atheist
[[link removed]].

On the other hand, we find that adults with more income – regardless
of how strong their belief was at 16 – are more likely to adopt the
stance that they do not believe in God
[[link removed]]. Each increase from one
income level to another on an 11-point scale increases the odds of
adopting an atheistic worldview by about 5%.

This could be a function of income providing a buffer against any
stigma associated with holding an atheistic worldview. Having a higher
income, for instance, may give an individual the resources needed to
avoid social circles and situations where being an atheist might be
treated negatively.

However, there may be another explanation. Some social scientists have
suggested that both wealth and faith can provide existential security
[[link removed]] –
the confidence that you are not going to face tragedy at any moment
– and therefore a higher income reduces the need to believe in
supernatural forces in the first place.

Such findings are a powerful reminder that our beliefs, behaviors and
identities are not entirely our own, but often shaped by situations
and cultures in which we find ourselves.[The Conversation]

Christopher P. Scheitle
[[link removed]],
Associate Professor of Sociology, _West Virginia University
[[link removed]]_
and Katie Corcoran
[[link removed]],
Associate Professor of Sociology, _West Virginia University
[[link removed]]_

This article is republished from The Conversation
[[link removed]] under a Creative Commons license. Read
the original article
[[link removed]].

* religion
[[link removed]]
* atheism
[[link removed]]
* identity
[[link removed]]
* class
[[link removed]]
* race
[[link removed]]
* Politics
[[link removed]]
* Culture
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]
Manage subscription
[[link removed]]
Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]