We are obviously approaching, based on polls, having twenty percent of Americans with no religious affiliation. These are increasingly being called the Nones. According to a recent Pew Forum study “Nones” on the Rise:
“In the last five years alone, the unaffiliated have increased from just over 15% to just under 20% of all U.S. adults. Their ranks now include more than 13 million self-described atheists and agnostics (nearly 6% of the U.S. public), as well as nearly 33 million people who say they have no particular religious affiliation (14%).”
There are very few demographic changes
that are this ferocious in the rate of change in our nation as a
whole. The nearly 20% figure is up from 7% in 1972. These are not
seekers looking for a new religion. Only 10% of those with no
particular religious affiliation say that they are looking for a
religion.
The same study showed that the change
was largely based on age related differences:
“A third of adults under 30 have no
religious affiliation (32%), compared with just one-in-ten who are 65
and older (9%).”
Back in 2008 the American Religion
Identification Survey (ARIS) had 34 million with no religion. This
survey had 90,000 humanists, 1.98 million agnostics,1.62 million
atheists and 30.4 million of others reporting no religion. There are
some notable differences with the Pew survey. There is a dramatic
increase in the proportion of those with no religion willing to adopt
an explicit term to identify their lack of religion. ARIS in 2008
had 10.8% of those with no religion saying they were humanists,
agnostics or atheists. The Pew study had 29% of those with no
religious affiliation reporting that they were atheist or agnostic.
This is almost a three times higher proportion using an explicit term
of secular self-identification.
The ARIS numbers suggested that there
were 18 times as many atheists as humanists. The Pew survey did not
even bother to ask if anyone identified as humanist. My research
using the Google Ngram viewer indicates that there has been a
dramatic decrease in the average use of “humanist” in the English
language. The polling of the readers of major humanist magazines
indicate that they skew much older than the case with the Nones in
all recent surveys (ie. Average age of 50 for readers of Free
Inquiry). My theory is that secular humanism was the term of
opprobrium for Jerry Falwell and other preachers during the 1980's and
early 1990's. Since then atheist has increasingly become the term of
choice to talk about those with no religion.
Secular people of any designation are
in general much less likely to want to organize than those who are
religious. There might be about one percent of those with no
religion are are organized in any way whatsoever. My data suggest
that all secular organizations of any sort, national and local
combined are likely to have less than several hundred thousand
members. The great majority of those who consider themselves
traditionally religious are affiliated with specific groups.
Gregory Berns has documented with fMRI
scans that our brains have two very different mechanisms to
articulate our moral instincts. He called them utilitarian and
deontic. The utilitarian moral system weighs the choices available
to people based on the projected well being or harm that will come
from the various choices. The deontic mechanism articulate rules
conveyed by the cultural group. Deontic means rule based. It also
is strongly associated with actual membership in groups. The
evolutionary history of our species is strongly influenced by the
positive cooperation that was possible by being a member of a tribe.
People who were not a member of a tribe died and understanding the
rules of a tribe was critically important for a person's survival.
People vary to a very significant extent in the degree to which they
are motivated by these utilitarian or deontic mechanisms. A
reasonable hypothesis is that secular people are less motivated by
the deontic mechanism which includes great motivation to be loyal to
the tribal group. We are more inclined to weigh the evidence and
support rules only if we see evidence that the consequences are
better with that rule. This individualistic thinking is the
antithesis of tribal loyalty. Thus secular people are radically less
inclined to be a member of a group.
Looking at Meetup, there are very few
groups with agnostic in the name. Although there are a great many
agnostics relatively few of them will chose to organize with a
secular group. Atheists and humanists are the categories that are
most willing to actually organize with a group. Looking just at the
numbers in groups with atheist or humanist in their names suggests
that there are about five times as many atheists than humanists who
desire to join a group. A five to one ratio is much different than
the 18 to 1 ratio found by by the ARIS survey. This could be in part
from the feeling of secular humanists that they were under ferocious
attack from Falwell and associates in prior decades. The feeling of
being under attack greatly increases the desire to be loyal to one's
tribe in response to that attack. Many urban atheists became so
because they encountered reasons to distrust religious claims. If
they did not feel any threat or attack for their subsequent unbelief
there was little need to be part of a tribe in response to attacks
from Christians. In many cases there is very little emotional
investment in their atheism. For the majority of atheists their
atheism is felt to be radically far down on the list of things that
they feel to be central to their identity. This implies that their
behavior is likely to be quite similar to the evidence we have for
agnostics.
There is a minority of humanists who
rather passionately tell me that atheists are awful because they are
too strident, confrontive and unsophisticated in their understanding
of the moral good. I find these claims to be preposterous when I
compare it to my personal experience. There seems to be very little
difference to me in the range and sophistication of views held by
humanists and atheists. There are just more young atheists because
atheist become more the term of choice in recent decades.
However, there seems to be real
evidence that supports the toxic attack mode that many associate with
the term atheist. In any group having an 18 fold greater number of
people there will be by any normal statistical distribution a far
greater number who are willing and able to articulate passionate
credible criticism of opposing views. The drama of that makes for
press copy that sells. However, it is even more complicated than
that. Consider the so called four horsemen of new atheism. Richard
Dawkins and Daniel C. Dennett both tried to popularize bright as a
term of choice for people with a secular worldview. Dawkins even now
prefers to call himself a tooth fairy agnostic. He does not want to
claim any absolute knowledge that God does not exist. He feels that
is consistent with the caution implicit in the scientific method. In
2007, at the Atheist Alliance International, I was present when Sam
Harris asserted that we should not be calling ourselves atheists. He
felt that we should just be concentrating on critical thinking and
the use of evidence. Thus three of the so called four horsemen
explicitly tried to distance themselves from atheism as a term. They
were forced by the media into being atheists because the media pinned
that term on them. Frankly, I typically find very little difference
in the actual arguments about religion articulated by humanists and
atheists.
I fully support the entire range of
strategies that we have for talking about religion. David Silverman
of American Atheists is very self aware about his very strong visible
role in secularism. He has called his very visible and expensive
messaging with billboards “shouting.” Apparently he privately
told Margaret Downey that his role is to make her more subtle
messaging “look good.” Those who prefer to work in a positive
way with religious communities will sometimes claim that the more
ferocious attack mode of American Atheists somehow does not work.
There is real evidence that frontal attack of someone's deeply held
religious beliefs will work on average. However, that is profoundly
irrelevant in a world where much of religious belief is loosely held.
Every day there are millions of religious people who question their
beliefs because of objections raised by those with no belief.
Thousands of those will lose their religion because of that. Frankly
the stronger varieties of atheism are doing a better job of grabbing
media attention and deserves in my opinion a disproportionally large
share of the credit for the massive increase in secularism in recent
years.
Chris Mooney is a secular person who is
deeply critical of people like Dawkins and Sam Harris. I
communicated to him my views that it was precisely people such as
Dawkins and Harris that voice reasons that inspire our tribal neural
programming to want to join with others. He did not think so. He
says we should behave more like Republicans and join together because
it is rational. Well, I certainly will endorse his message that it
is rational for us to join together and be loyal to our secular
cause. However, personal loyal to a group will remain largely a
“conservative” quality. I seriously doubt that Mooney's
assertion of rationality will make much difference.
I do want to ask those who are turned off by what seems to be strident attacks on religion to get over it. If we don't have such people included in our group we will not have the work and loyalty needed to make a group work. If arguments are factually false let's point out the evidence and reasoning to that more clearly communicates what is real. On the other hand, if we are every going to have 10,000 atheists as members of secular groups in our area we will need to include the apatheists who just don't care much about religion. The majority of those with no religion (including the majority of atheists) will just be those who have outgrown religion. If we are to have them as members we need to do much more than just attack religion. In fact if we have a robust program to work positively with religious groups we will be able to include vastly more people in our group. We need to do both.
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