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This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 at 11:05 AM and filed under Religion. Follow comments here with the RSS 2.0 feed. Skip to the end and leave a response. Trackbacks are closed.

One Response to “AlterNet: 40 Million Nonbelievers in America? The Secret Is Almost Out”

1. Ian Alterman said:

   While all of the major polls (Pew, Marist et al) done over the past year have indeed shown that there is an increase in those self-identifying as atheist or agnostic, there are two huge fallacies in this article.

   First, that does not mean that the number of people who identify as “religious” (whether Jew, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Jainist et al) has declined. And even in those polls which do show a decline in those who self-identify as “religious,” the decline is nowhere near as high as is often reported.

   Second, the author here is blatantly cherry-picking only a single poll (and one additional article) in order to “prove” his point. Yet that poll is not the most accurate of the polls done in the past year: unless one checks the scientific “rigor” of the polling method, questions, etc., it is disingenuous to rely on it so strongly.

   Thus, the author is using only a single poll (one that may or may not be as scientifically accurate as others) not only to make a claim that atheism and agnosticism are rising rapidly – and suggesting a (insupportable) concommitant decline in religiosity – but to further extrapolate (in a hopelessly insupportable and unscientific way) that there may be “40 million” atheists in the U.S.

   Yet no other poll (many or most of which are more accurate than this one) that shows an increase in self-identification as atheist and agnostic – even if it shows a decline in religiosity – suggests a number even CLOSE to this.

   Thus, the author is not only inaccurate, but simply dreaming.

   Peace.

   Posted on 06-May-09 at 9:09 am | Permalink