5% of Americans own a car but not a drivers licence.
WTH, Americans think that 30% of the country lives in NYC?
They think 21% are transgender too… A lot of propaganda has gone through these people.
“Transvestigation” is fucking insane and there are a lot of people who are convinced that many celebrities are secretly trans.
I think it mostly started with disgusting conspiracies about Michelle Obama (they literally believe that Sasha and Malia were kidnapped, even have specific missing children they think they are). Alex Jones and his ilk think Michelle was born Michael.
This was a thing that developed I think late in his presidency, then it expanded to several other figures. My favorite is Donald Glover as a trans man - I’ll gladly welcome Childish Gambino into my community.
It’s a serious “Q anon” type mentally ill worldview.
Donald Glover as a trans man? I’m currious what makes them think that? Either way, dudes a fucking legend and is welcome in any community I’m in.
The comments are also… very interesting. Apparently Tyler Perry, Will Smith, Journey’s Steve Perry and fucking Messi are trans men.
We are legion!
Messi
But I thought only trans women were “cheating” at sports.
trans men are cheating because they still consider them women, and women aren’t allowed to be good at sports.
it somehow always manages to boil down to misogyny with these people
I think you’re missing my joke about Messi. He’s one of the best players in soccer/football, and the MAGATs think he’s a trans man? Which would mean he was a woman who is now dominating men’s sport.
That’s because he’s incredibly awesome and poignant in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYOjWnS4cMY
We can’t have people respecting a black man who shows the reality of the situation, can we?
By the looks of it, it’s 30% to NYC, 30% to Texas, and 30% to California. So 10% for literally everywhere else in the US. That’s gotta be close, right?
I’d totally get that for polling people outside of North America. It’s just shocking to see it from people who have probably been to NYC or at least another major metro area – which would instantly falsify a 30% number for NYC.
Why assume most Americans have seen NYC or other major cities though? Most of us don’t ever make enough money to travel this country’s hard-to-imagine-how-big-it-actually-is vastness, or even enough to leave our hometowns for longer than a couple days before financial woes start nipping at the mind, if not worse.
This is not to say I think it’s a reasonable conclusion to think 30% of our population is in any of these three areas of course. That is silly and requires a very skewed view of things (which, lucky us, is easily provided by any number of increasingly ‘official’ seeming news sources that really just deal in intentional fear mongering and reductionism). Most people tend to believe whatever is put before them, and we have a system that has been explicitly set up to present false images of reality to US citizens. Propaganda to keep the propaganda machine running, right? As unreasonable as it is, it also makes sense that people could be duped into believing it because this system so many of us are stick within is hellbent on ensuring that we are intentionally conditioned out of the ability to know better by adulthood. It doesn’t work on everyone, but it works well enough that’s it’s perpetuation is currently one of the highest yielding economies this foolish country has to offer.
The line of thought that seems obvious and reasonable to you and me has been intentionally beaten out of countless people here before they even had a chance to understand how to think rationally. I don’t know how to fix these things. It is just so obvious to me from this inside vantage that the stupidity of our country is one that has been intentionally manufactured and amplified at the expense of us, the actual people the same system depends on and revolves around keeping ignorant.
Sorry for the rant. Many Americans are dumb. Most of the ones that are never had a real option to be anything else because of how fucked things are here. That’s not intended as an excuse, but as an attempt at an explanation tbc
Most of us don’t ever make enough money to travel this country’s hard-to-imagine-how-big-it-actually-is vastness, or even enough to leave our hometowns for longer than a couple days before financial woes start nipping at the mind, if not worse.
This is completely contradicted by the data:
“The average American has visited 16 states besides the one where they currently live, a new YouGov survey finds. Older Americans are likelier to have visited more states than younger Americans. 32% of Americans 65 or older say they’ve visited at least 30 states [. . .]” link
The working poor don’t participate in yougov that much.
Many rural areas in the US still don’t even have internet access except for the wealthiest homes/neighborhoods among them. And, as we share this exchange, many more are actively ontheir way to losing access to the same, simply because, regardless of the cost on us, our government has decided to put that money into the pockets of people that do not need it. I grew up in an area where the internet was assumed to be only for the wealthy because things were just that stuck in time due to the blatant misallocation of government funding and the greedy fucks that ensured things would be this way. That’s the same government that ran this poll, right? So if we both know, for different reasons and in different ways, that this government can not be trusted, why trust them to give you accurate data on this topic?
The issue with data points like this is that they imply an assumption of completion that simply can not actually exist because of how incredibly large our population is. There is no way to wrangle all of these cats into taking the same singular poll in order to get truly accurate numbers, so accepting these numbers without any skepticism is, at best, an assumption based on a lack of information, much like how some people can believe that a disproportionate amount of people live in unreasonably small areas. Think about the people in those underpriveleged rural areas I mentioned up top. How many of them do you believe were asked or invited to take this poll? How many of them never had a chance to due to lack of access? How many do you think chose not to participate because of their frustration with how things are and the people that made it this way? How many do you think refused because they just couldnt care less?Why assume that these factors should not be considered when trying to get a clear and true understanding of how things are here for the common people?
Sitcoms fucked us up
I’m guessing these same people do know roughly the total population of the US. And are bad at math in general. That would mean 100 million people live in NYC.
It’s shocking how bad normal people are with basic math
The other ~60% live in California and Texas respectively 😆
They also believe they are a majority of the world population, which is incredibly obvious if you spend any time online (that theu believe that, not that they are that). Several times when I’ve said that the US population is 3% of the world population I’ve gotten replies saying that can’t be true or that I and dumb for believing obviously false facts or obvious anti-American propaganda… Absolutely pathetic.
The way I read this graph is that the upper portion are people they want to oppress and the lower portion are people that they preserve is oppressing them.
Well, that is pretty much how television seems to think things are…
I always thought it was weird how in so many shows that are targeted to a nationwide audience how often they seem to just assume some specific subway thing in NYC is something that their audience will instantly get and relate to.
Feels like they polled an elementary school in Philadelphia
Mississippi more like.
Feels like they polled an elementary school in Jersey
You mean the state with the highest ranked Pre-K-12 by US News and World Report? That Jersey?
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings/education/prek-12
Errr, I mean “Lol Jersey sucks amirite?”
Not even relevant. Kids are stupid about scope at this age regardless of location. Jersey would explain the perspective disproportion of the NYC stat, which is a major outlier in the set while fitting the rest of the patterns well. Fa get abo dit
How was that not relevant? lol… you made a joke about kids in Jersey elementary schools being dumb, and I showed the stat that says it’s actually #1 in the nation.
Seems relevant to me.
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Only 3% Atheists… And all of them are here on Lemmy.
I know Americans love Jesus a whole lot but really only 4%. That just seems crazy low
I think it’s because people are still uncomfortable answering “atheist” on questionnaires and polls. It’s easier to say “no religious affiliation”, and most people are probably agnostic instead of atheist anyway.
You’re right. This survey lists 29 % of Americans as “Religiously unaffiliated”. Of those 5 % are Atheists, 6 % Agnostic and 19 % “Nothing in particular”.
I wouldn’t answer atheist because I feel that’s as much a belief as any religion. I’m agnostic. The most undecided choice possible.
Atheism is nothing more than a lack of belief in any god.
It’s a bit like asking me what’s my favourite marvel superhero. It’s not that I don’t like them or don’t think they are important for some people. It’s just not relevant for me.
Right. Except … Spiderman. Always Spiderman.
Yea, similarly there is no way 70% of Americans are Christian. That’s probably just the way they are raised and are likely to fill out if you don’t feel comfortable saying “atheist”.
70% Christian, 3% Atheist, 1% Muslim, 2% Jewish… WTF are the other 24%? Don’t tell me there are that many Buddhist/Hindu/Shinto/etc. folks here! Something’s not adding up.
You might be surprised about places other than SoCal and NY NY. Like growing up in Tennessee Alabama and Georgia, everyone seemed to have some affiliation. The level of engagement varied, but I never met someone that was an openly staunch atheist in real life. There is a deep stigma about such a thing in the South, - sadly. There, even extremists like Church of God are nominalized (screaming you’re going to hell for an hour, exorcism/miracle drama nonsense, mobbing behaviors, religious masochism).
It is likely one would need to be second or third generation removed from and religious social support network in a family unit before a person would truly answer atheist on such a poll. I don’t think many people grow to the point of self awareness to care to define an anti religious god certainty at this stage in human cultural evolution.
While I have not lived in the south I do have some deeply religious and conservative family members, so I do see where you’re coming from. I just think even a good chunk of the people you mentioned have an affiliation to fit in and not because they are genuinely religious, i.e. pray regularly and go to church every Sunday. In other words, it’s a cultural thing. They probably wouldn’t go so far as to consider themselves atheist, but I could easily see them considering themselves culturally Christian and non-religious in practice. I have no idea what percentage that actually breaks down to, but my guess is it’s a decent amount lower than 70%.
Depending on who is doing the polling, I’m not answering truthfully. I don’t want proselytizing and I don’t want to risk getting sent to any Aushwitz that they are building. I doubt I am alone.
There’s kind of a lot of Christians here actually… Or at least apologists.
These estimates are bananas, this only shows the systematic stupidification of Americans is highly successful.
It’s called propaganda! Relentless, unceasing bombardment of right wing brain rotting propaganda.
Do explain…
Social Media
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There are some errors in the “correct” numbers For example, note that the respondents estimated that 89% of Americans have a high school diploma or higher. Yet the chart says the real figure is 65%. But doesn’t that seem odd to you? Do you think on average 35% of people drop out of high school?No, the source of this error is that the question is poorly worded. 90% of Americans 25 or older have a college degree. The graphic indicates the poll asked specifically about adults. And it seems the respondents had the correct answer, about 90%.I don’t know where they get the figure that only 65% of adults have a high school degree. My best estimate is that they mixed up “the percentage of adults with a high school degree” and “the percent of people with a high school degree.” The latter would count all current K12 students, as they obviously don’t have their diploma yet.This is one item that really stood as an obvious and glaring error. And if I can see this one, I wonder if other numbers in either the ‘correct’ responses or the respondents’ results are just due to poor or incorrect phrasing/interpretation of questions.I have two master’s degrees, have spent years teaching undergraduate engineering courses, am working on a dual-major PhD in engineering…and I…apparently…cannot read a plot.
The fact that you recognized your error and were able to immediately correct it, rather than double down on being wrong or some shit, implies that you’re a somewhat intelligent person
Check the color of the dots, my friend. Red is the true value, blue is the survey participants’ estimate.
I’m a scientist! :D
Appreciate the skepticism regardless!
I find myself wondering how these figures have changed over time. Did we actually get worse, or have we always been this fucking ignorant?
I would estimate we are 25 percent worse.
25% worse over what time period?
the systematic stupidification of the 2000 Americans polled in this study*
Americans believe 20% of the people have an income of over 1 million dollars and
20%30%of Americans live in NYC. Am I reading this chart wrong????
NYC has a population of what? 10 million people? So they think there’s only 30 million people living in the states?
NYC stood out to me too. We think 3 out of 10 people in the US live in NYC??? Lmaooo. I think a big part of it is that we just generally don’t comprehend statistics because some of these numbers are wild.
How many of these questions had you really, truly considered before?
I speculate that most Americans just don’t think about these things that in depth and, when asked, throw out a number without giving due consideration.
Don’t attribute to stupidity what can be adequately explained by laziness
Im very sorry, but I cannot in any sane logical line of reasoning think as to why people would say 1/3 Americans live in New York, even if they just blurted out a random number
Stupidity?
If you’re already stupid and you get asked the question, and then don’t even bother to give it due consideration, it’s entirely plausible you just blurt out a number.
It does also say these are averages so it’d be interesting to see a scatter plot of all respondents.
Stupidity?
That is what I was getting, yes
I cannot in any sane logical line of reasoning
Ah, I guess I was thrown by this since it didn’t require insanity or illogical reasoning to come up with “stupidity”.
Yes, however as you were implying that a more reasonable explanation lied in the responder’s laziness, I was also implying that any reason other than stupidity was requiring of some mental gymnastics
Maybe because NYC(and LA) are stupidly over represented in the media.
Well, most of US media is made in, or by companies in, those two cities.
And?
That would be why they have more representation.
You can’t even say they NYC is over represented in media because that’s where it’s filmed. A lot of NYC sitcoms are filmed in LA. The reason is just urban narcissism. I’ve outright heard a new yorker say that NYC is the cultural center of America and even tried to credit NYC with popularizing pizza in the US.
A lot of the companies that produce them are from NYC though. Also Pizza was popularized, in the US, from immigrants in NYC, and while america having a single cultural center isn’t really thing, if you had to pick one A LOT of people would choose it.
I have a lot of doubt over the graph just based on how they average the results. You’re bound to get people guessing super high or super low, which would skew if they were just getting the mean.
The blue numbers are completely absurd. 30% live in Texas, 32% in California, 30% in NYC. And 20% with a household income over 1 million? I know a couple who are top seniors at Google & Apple, respectively, and while I think they may be over 500k annually, I doubt it’s a million. And I definitely know they are far from the median.
It’s interesting to me that NYC, Jewish, and gay/lesbian all had the same wildly incorrect estimate on average.
2000 Americans polled in this study*
Holy, holy, holy…they actually thought 21% of people are transgender? 1 in 5?? The only thing this proves is the polled Americans are stupid AF. 🙄🙄🙄
seems like they polled mostly boomers or conservatives.
88% own a car, but only 82% have a license? Interesting
You don’t need a license to own a car. You need one to drive it.
You need one to drive it
legally
There are people, especially in the rural south, who own and operate a vehicle without a license.
Sometimes even congressmen
Something like 40% of drivers in San Antonio, Texas are unlicensed. The one time I’ve gotten in an accident, it was an uninsured, unlicensed driver.
I once let my license lapse for almost a year because I was working remotely and drove so little that I kept forgetting to renew it. Figure that 6% difference is only a few years in a lifetime, it’s probably just lapsed licenses, and when people get to the age they stop driving they typically keep the car longer than the license
Probably bought the car then lost their license.
It seems the real thing this survey shows is most Americans are fucking dumb.
To be fair, the information they have access to suggests a much more diverse situation than reality. So it’s understandable to be reluctant to recognize that any group might dominate the majority so much or that a well recognized minority population is actually so small. You’d have to study up the specific numbers, which are usually less important to keep track of than the relative subjective realitiies associated with each group.
True, but also, how could anyone think 30% of people in the US, a population of nearly 350,000,000, live in New York City. That would dwarf the population of even Tokyo, the most densely populated metropolitan area in the world.
That’s crazy.
As someone who tries to keep the vague number in mind, it would be strange to me as well, but I suspect a large number of people don’t really try to keep even the vague numbers in mind about how many people are about or how many people realistically could reside in a place like NYC.
They track the rough oversimplifications. Like “barely anyone lives in the middle of the country”, and every TV show they see in the US either has a bunch of background people in NYC or LA, or is in the middle of nowhere with a town seemingly made up of mere dozens of people. They might know that “millions” live in the US and also, “millions” live in NYC, so same “ballpark” if they aren’t keeping track of the specifics. They’d probably believe 10 million in NYC and 50 million nationwide.
This is presuming they bother to follow through on the specific math rather than merely roughly throwing out a percentage.
I unfortunately have to downvote this as this is far too interesting to be mildly interesting.
This is extremely interesting and illuminating. The kind of thing I’ve been interested in my whole adult life.
I grudgingly have to upvote you for being accurate even though the information is creating great discussions.
It was definitely a reluctant downvote from my side as well. But I feel this community is honestly abused and not living up to its name with the amount of “VeryInteresting” content.
They think almost 25% of people are trans?? Jesus fucking christ
It explains so much when it’s played up so heavily in talk shows, despite the reality always having been very minor. Honestly I didn’t realize me being gay was that much of a minority either. I kind of wish ADHD had been one in the list; if I remember the reality is like no more than 3-5% of the population but people assume it’s over diagnosed as hell and like…not really. Maybe when there was the initial “rush” of sorts for parents during the 90’s because of it seeming to help “unruly” kids, often just meaning imaginative or creative. In my case my parents didn’t even know until my kindergarten teacher told them I should get evaluated, and yep.
neurodivergence is seeing a boom in diagnoses because we now actually fucking diagnose neurodivergence instead of going “yeah the kid’s a retard dump em in the bin”
Oh for sure. It’s still only in that like 5% range but what I meant was folks treat it like it’s new and like…nah.
I hate it. I haven’t run into anyone directly doubting my ADHD at all lately, but as a kid I definitely faced that stigma from some other kids saying it’s “fake”, and I think one of the teachers even said it.
Or vice versa, people have that perception because the media and social networks fixate on it so much.
Frequently meaning well, but the attempt to be very inclusive creates for some crazy unrealisitc representations.
33% have a college degree yet only 3% are atheist. That’s batshit crazy. I can’t imagine having the critical thinking skills needed for a degree and not using those skills to figure out that god is a fairy tale.
Yes I know lots of educated people are religious - I had several christian professors when I was studying mathematics / computer science. That doesn’t make it any less crazy to me.
What’s not represented in the graph… I think you’ll find a large portion of agnostics and “cultural Christians”. I.e. people who go to church because they’re raised that way in their community expects it.
Even if you don’t go to church if you were raised going to church and then stopped, you still might call yourself a [cultural] Christian.
Also being atheist has a bad reputation attached to it for some people, so someone who meets the definition might not self identify as one.
Similarly I expect that’s also why there are a fewer percentage of Democrats than there are Republicans. I may have voted down ballot for only Democrats, but am I a DNC supporting Democrat? Not really.
Mt wife consider herself catholic but never goes to the church and live her life exactly like mine as an Atheist (doing drugs on techno parties). For the majority of people is just something they don’t really think about and just consider themselves wharever religion just because they grow up in it.
Nominally “Christian” because they like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.
I think you are overestimating the intelligence required to get a degree in this country, also lots of intelligent people have religious beliefs of some level.
And most people who don’t necessarily believe in god or practice any religion still respond to such questions with whatever religion they were born into because it’s not important enough to them to take a hard stance like calling themselves atheist, or maybe they choose to be agnostic so they might not pick the atheist option.
My point is lots of factors go into surveys like these, they don’t necessarily paint a super accurate picture, since any type of survey will have some external and internal biases and sampling issues baked into them
Because you don’t need critical thinking skills for a degree.
This is the correct answer…tons of degrees are worth less than the paper they’re printed on. College has become a grown up playground for many people. Probably 50% of the people who go, probably shouldn’t and should have went to trade schools to learn something that’s useful vs getting a degree in management.
Einstein believed in god.
More of a pantheistEdit:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein#Religious_and_philosophical_views
In a letter he wrote:
The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. … For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. … I cannot see anything ‘chosen’ about them.
That depends on your definition of the word “god”. Einstein certainly wasn’t an Abrahamist, he was a pantheist. He believed the entire universe was comprised by a divine whole.
Being part of a Religion has social benefits, so don’t be surprised if a lot of those non-Atheists don’t trully believe it but participate in it because it’s good for them or because of social pressure.
Certainly, and speaking in terms of Christians which is the ones I’m more familiar with, considering the number of people who actual strictly even just try to follow ALL the teachings of Jesus or even all of the 10 commandments, almost all “Religious” people pick and chose which parts they believe and which they don’t.
(In modern society Greed and Envy by themselves are probably regularly broken by 99% of Christians).
I get this one. Many years ago a former wife tried to convert me. I started going to chruch, bible studies etc. and after a while I realised that none of the people I was with actually believed anything - they were just going through the motions doing the stuff you need to do to stay in the club.
I’m extremely skeptical of any organized religion, where divine authority is asserted for the words said/written by some dudes, but I’m not going to close the door on something beyond what we can know.
But no one’s guess carries any more weight than another, no person should be assumed to have an inherently more valid relationship with divinity than another.
So I have a bit of a vague faith, but not in any concrete concepts put forth by religion, since I have no reason to think their guess would be any better than a guess I could make on my own, and someone’s ability to think otherwise seems a very dangerous reality.
It’s not anything actionable, just more a hope that there’s more to things than we see.
Wait until you develop a chronic health issue and you discover how many so-called physicians jabber about god. It’s fucking grim out there.
Others are bringing up good points, but one of the biggest reasons is many people are idiot savants. Smart in one or two areas and complete fucking morons in everything else.
I dunno if I’d use that term, but I can say that in my STEM field, the education was SO silo’d, that so many (otherwise very intelligent) people I’ve worked with in my field have been complete fucking morons about anything outside their area of expertise.
I fucked around a bit in college, and didn’t declare a major for a while at first, so I ended up with a much more well-rounded education than most of my colleagues, and it really shows. Some of the most valuable courses I took were ones that I never would have had the chance to take had I declared my STEM major immediately.
They should honestly add an entire semester (at least) of non-major, liberal arts courses for STEM majors. It won’t happen, obviously, but it really should be a thing.
You shouldn’t use “god” as a proper noun. No one being owns the concept of being a god. You’re just legitimising Abrahamism, you’re not helping the atheist cause. Helping Abrahamists erase polytheism doesn’t lead to more atheism, it leads to more Abrahamists.
I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make. I have god, not God. I know because I was typing on my phone and it autocorrected to God three times and I had to go back and fix it.
It should say “gods are a fairy tale”. “god is a fairy tale” is misleading grammar if you don’t mean there’s one. You wouldn’t say “gremlin is a fairy tale”, you’d say “gremlins are a fairy tale”.
The 42% are democrats and 47% are republicans is the true surprise. That is a huge difference even though it might not seem like it.
So many Nazis.
Ah yes, the people I don’t like are Nazis. Good job.
Nazis are people I don’t like. The political ideology is the reason I dislike them, not the other way ‘round.
Well, I have been a registered Republican as long as I have been voting.
And have been voting straight Democrat for over a decade now.
I wonder if there are more like me?
Curious, why do you remain registered as a Republican?
My state has open primaries and I vote in the Republican primary to fuck their shit up.
If your state has open primaries, you don’t need to register Republican to vote in their primary though?
No. That’s the point of an open primary. You can vote in either party’s primarily.
I’m in a pretty red district. My primary vote is more powerful when voting Republican.
Why register Republican if you don’t need to register for a party to vote in a primary? Open primary means you don’t need to be registered with the party to vote in their primary. So why register Republican?
Edit: Oh ok, I see that was someone else who made the initial comment. I never check usernames…
At this point I don’t know.
Initially I thought I could “undermine” from within. I’m a 50 year old, white, vet, so I tick a lot of conservative boxes, and I imagined I could plant seeds of doubt with people that might assume to include me in certain groups.
But that never really happened, and both parties can hang for all I care. (At least 90% of the ones over 65.)
So now I just vote straight Dem for harm reduction and tell young folks they need to be active, vote, and take the roles away from us older folks cuz we can’t be trusted to do what is obviously and objectively the right thing to do.
What is funny is I have been reading and listening to a lot of early US history and this has literally been the same story over and over again.
Is there a political system that works?
We haven’t tried this one yet. I’m willing to give it a go!
Not OP, but probably to sabotage the competition rather than force each party to run a competitive candidate.
I wonder how much that has to do with state rules on voting in primaries. Like, when I lived in MA I was registered independent because that would let me vote in any primary (but only one). My current state, I have to be affiliated with a specific party to vote.
Also interesting, the estimated percentage of Democrats is bigger than the estimated percentage of Republicans while the true percentage is the other way around.
Except it’s wrong. 40% are independents so a 50/50 split cannot happen.
This is a shitty poll as it splits everyone 50/50 and neither party has the plurality of voters.
they estimated 21% of the population are trans, lol I wish 😂
If 21% of the population was trans, republicans ain’t winning elections again.
You underestimate the proportion of dumb people. Trans people can also be dumb.
Yeah that’s bananas. I wonder if people saying 1 in 5 people are trans even know a trans person
I mean I guess you’re joking, but nevertheless I think it’s a bad thing to hope that every fifth person gets born into a body their mind doesn’t agree with.
eh I’m trans, and now that I’ve transitioned, it’s largely a neutral experience, neither good nor bad, it just is. But in my comment I meant that I think society (broadly) wouldn’t be nearly as transphobic if every 5th person was trans.
3% Atheists is such a bullshit number. There is a famous Pew poll, where they asked people two questions side by side, “are you an atheist” and “do you believe in any god”, and 4% answered no to the first one and something like 20% answered no to the second one.
I think “atheist” carries the connotations of being irreligeous, not just not believing in any gods. So some people may not believe in any gods, but maybe they do have some kind of spirituality, or believe in ghosts or something. Buddhism as a religion doesn’t mandate God-belief, though some schools do interact with devas. I’m unsure if any other religions don’t require gods to work, but even if they exist, I imagine they and Buddhists, despite not believing in any gods, will be very hesitant to describe themselves as “atheist.”
i’d say you can be atheist and believe in ghosts/spirits, that’s pretty different from divine beings
the core thing about divinity is power, power to do things or power to have done things in the past or future. spirits and ghosts generally have power comparable to living people, so the lack of obvious evidence for their existence isn’t anywhere near as big of an issue as with deities capable of altering the fabric of reality.
it’s not that incongrous that we’d fail to notice things that can barely interact with us, but an explicitly omnipotent and omniscient god? they can damn well write “hey ho here i am!” in the clouds.
I don’t disagree; that was never my point. My point is the term “atheist” carries a lot of baggage, that might make people not want to associate with it for many reasons that are unrelated to what the word actually means. Especially in the West where the term is severely maligned.
According to the same research, 1% of US adults are Buddhist, and they fall in a separate cathegory.
All the polls are weird, and very much depending on how you ask the question and how you slice the data.
But you’re right, the word atheist carries some baggage in a christian nationalist country, but that was kind of almost my point. So many people are afraid of the word atheist, but are “not religious, don’t believe in any gods, don’t follow any practices”, which is, actual textbook definition of the word.
Sounds about right, there’s a difference between atheism and agnosticism, which is what the 2nd question is asking.
This isn’t the difference. Agnosticism postulates that knowing if any god exist is categorically unanswerable. The matter of your personal believe is a parallel question entirely. “We cannot be sure, but I personally don’t believe any gods” makes an atheist, but so does “There is absolutely no evidence for any gods so I don’t believe any”. “We cannot be sure, but I personally believe in Sobek, may his sperm be neverending” makes a theist.
I think the bigger difference is “I don’t believe but I also don’t think others are wrong” is a kind of mentality often. I think that and people are used to seeing self-proclaimed atheists being assholes loudly and go “well I’m not that”. Atheism got fucked over by people who just want to be dicks to religious folks.
Here’s how I’m reading the questions:
“are you an atheist”. 4%
4% of respondents have a firm belief that gods do not exist. (atheist)
“do you believe in any god” 20%
20% of respondents do not believe in a god, but do not necessarily think they don’t exist either. They don’t have enough knowledge to form a belief, i.e. they don’t know. (agnostic)
Agnosticism is the separate category in that questioneer. Pew is weird about it, they just list every major religion and sect, then “other” then “agnostic”, “atheist”, and “nothing”, and you need to chose one, which might be the source of confusion, and I can’t see any good explanation on why do they do it like that. LIke I said, bullshit number. “Don’t believe in any gods, don’t follow any religion, not an agnostic” is an atheist, by definition. Separating it into “atheist” and “atheist but different word” can only serve one purpose, to dilute the numbers so christians don’t feel threatened by all the evil heathens.
Mmm, in that case just sounds like unreliable data.
4% answered no to the first one and something like 20% answered no to the second one.
Where did the other 76% go?
It’s an overlapping numbers from different questioneers. A bunch people for example are christians who never been to church and don’t believe in a christian god.
