One is that the persons citing the Pew studies including that concept clearly haven't read the study closely enough to represent it honestly. If they read what they are pretending to cite, they would read that it says the opposite of how they characterize it.
However, a new survey by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life, conducted jointly with the PBS television program Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, finds that many of the country’s 46 million unaffiliated adults are religious or spiritual in some way. Two-thirds of them say they believe in God (68%). More than half say they often feel a deep connection with nature and the earth (58%), while more than a third classify themselves as “spiritual” but not “religious” (37%), and one-in-five (21%) say they pray every day. In addition, most religiously unaffiliated Americans think that churches and other religious institutions benefit society by strengthening community bonds and aiding the poor.
I have more than just a passing annoyance with what this proves about the superficiality of the news media and reporting, you see, I happen to be one of those inserted into this artificial construct, "Nones" since I don't officially belong to any denomination and I don't regularly attend religious services of any kind.
John Hockenberry on The Takeaway and virtually every single other person in the media and every atheist I've ever read online who refers to this group misrepresents the finding. Here is how they presented it:
According to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, a full 1 in 4 millennials, those born between 1981 and 2000, do not affiliate with any faith. They haven't just lapsed in observance, but have chosen to leave organized religion altogether.
Why are atheism and agnosticism on the rise? And what does it take to go against your family's faith?
They conflate being unaffiliated with being atheist or agnostic, despite what the findings they base that on show. That happening with the frequency it does certainly has the feel of an agenda being served. I suspect some of that is due to the widespread hostility towards Christianity among the would-be intelligentsia who staff the media. Though one of my ground level prerequisites for inclusion in that artificial group would be that they actually read what they cite and that they cite it accurately.
Another thing is that atheism is still somewhat fashionable, though I think that fad is passing. If, after a decade of the snarky, mendacious, inaccurate and bigoted and massive hate-talk against religion, atheists still fail to top 3% in one of the most popular surveys cited by atheists, themselves, it's just not taking the way that atheists want so very desperately to believe it is.
It's clear that among the "Nones" atheism is the smallest percentage of those included in it, agnostics the next smallest part. Together they don't comprise even a third of the group.
One of the problems with this is that the piece done on The Takeaway was so short that nothing but a superficial, inevitably distorting presentation of it would be possible. And it would not have fit in with the theme of the segment. It would have been entirely more honest and responsible to leave out the Pew study than to misrepresent it.
This is only one instance of the widespread misrepresentation of published survey results in the media but it is one that I've looked into and one of the more frequently occurring ones. I think some of that is a problem of how Pew reports their results. There is no real category as "Nones" that have any important cohesive commonality. It is an artificial category that may originate in convenience but which has obviously created a distortion of reality instead of an enhancement of it. Both Pew and the media that report on their findings are supposed to be about giving us a clearer view of the world but, clearly, they aren't.
If, after a decade of the snarky, mendacious, inaccurate and bigoted and massive hate-talk against religion, atheists still fail to top 3% in one of the most popular surveys cited by atheists, themselves, it's just not taking the way that atheists want so very desperately to believe it is.
ReplyDeleteYup. I do think the "massive" is overblown; not by you, but by atheists. They imagine a much larger audience than they have, just as they imagine everyone who is not against them is with them.
And too many imagine people like me are "against" them. Which is another bit of foolishness. But far easier to divide the world into "Us" and "Them". Far easier to make stark distinctions and insist those distinctions are definitions as well.
I've actually got more than one post up at the moment about this. Part of what amuses me is the stark similarity between the GOP in D.C., insisting that if only people understood they would agree with the GOP; and people I've encountered on the Web (where I've encountered far more atheists than I have in real life. OTOH, I know a lot of "Nones."), who likewise insist that if people just knew what they knew (i.e., thought as they thought) then victory would be in hand.
Nice work, if you can get it.
And then there are the Ted Cruz's, who insist their "persecution" is proof they are right, and the only people who matter, are those who agree with them. A whole different level of crazy.
And finally, how sad is it that the internet has made us more, not less, parochial? But that leads to another topic....
I just noticed the number of agnostics has risen more than the number of atheists in the chart. Let me report that accurately: the number of people identifying as "agnostic" increased by 1.2%, v. the number identifying as atheist, which rose 0.8% in the same time period.
ReplyDeleteSomething remarkably thoughtful about that, since agnostic is a position of greater consideration of information than atheist. In simplest terms, the agnostic says "I don't know," the atheist says "I do know," and the believer says "I believe."
Only two of those are actually talking about the same thing.
I suspect a part of the increase in the atheist response is probably due to it being fashionable as well.
ReplyDeleteThe story about "millennials" turning atheist in droves is certainly not a careful reporting of their chosen source, it is, though, like a number of other "stories" easily repeated by a lazy media that doesn't bother to research what they allege. I've heard it and read it for years in about the same form, similarly misrepresenting the Pew surveys they pretend to cite.
Did you notice the percent increase in "other faith" is larger than both of those groups and from a larger original base number?
One thing the past decade has made me is less willing to present atheists with the level of nuance I used to. I haven't noticed an awful lot of rejection of the hate-talk among atheists. I'm a big believer in treating people by the rules they insist on. Individual cases handled on an individual basis.
One thing the past decade has made me is less willing to present atheists with the level of nuance I used to. I haven't noticed an awful lot of rejection of the hate-talk among atheists. I'm a big believer in treating people by the rules they insist on. Individual cases handled on an individual basis.
ReplyDeleteI had a neighbor once who was an avowed and thoughtful atheist. Even as I planned to leave that house and go to seminary, we respected each other and had pleasant conversations on topics religious. I've used him since as an example of a Christian (his generosity and kindness were boundless) who was not a Christian.
If he doesn't get into Heaven because of his non-belief, it's not a place worth being in. He's kind of my counter to salvation=adherence to a certain doctrine touchstone.
I no longer hang out where atheists "dwell". I avoid comments on websites with posts about religion (ThinkProgress has some very good ones; HuffPo is sometimes interesting. I don't frequent religious websites because I'm just not that interested.) They avoid my blog, too, by and large; which is fine.
I'm less and less inclined to be patient with them, which is why I avoid any discussion of religion by the egregiously ignorant atheists I stumble across on-line. Thanks for pointing out the real increase is in "other faith." I know atheism is popular in Europe and England (see., e.g., Stephen Fry and the late C. Hitchens) but I don't think it's as widespread as is commonly imagined. As it adjusted itself to the world of Rome, then the collapse of Rome, then kingdoms, then nation states, Xianity again is adjusting itself to changing times. What is eternal is God and God's word; what is temporal is humanity's understanding of that, and their relationship to it.
I don't think that's ever going to go away.