Religious people tend to get testy when we atheists climb on them, the internet is much easier to stay on, so I would say that yes, religious people have far fewer atheists on them than the internet does.
I think this is incorrect. I think 20% list themselves as “none” when asked about religious affiliation, which is considerably different that self-identifying as athiest.
This group probably overwelming believes in god, but just doesn’t claim to belong to an organized religion.
A satisfactory answer isn’t likely to exist, so for shits and giggles, I made a poll thread over at 4chan /b/. I’m going to leave the thread open on auto-refresh and come back to it later when it 404s to do a final tally, but so far:
13 yes
13 no
2 maybe
4 irrelevant/wrong question/mu-type responses
Again, will post final tally later, but this is pretty indicative of most general-purpose boards that I’ve ever seen. Obviously political and religious centered boards will have their own leans.
edit: Exactly as I hit “Submit” for this post, someone bumped the thread over there with an answer explicitly stating “mu”, which hadn’t been used yet by name. Neat concept.
Check out the Social Fixer app for Facebook. Works with almost everything except IE. The biggest feature is that there is a filtering option that allows you to put in a string of keywords and it will hide posts containing them.
Now if they could just make that work for the content of pictures that people post, that would be perfection.
Final: 25 yes; 28 no; 4 maybe; 10 mu.
Whoops - the question was “is there a God.”
Catholicism is a religion, nothing else. Atheism deals with the question of whether or not there is a supreme being. And since no one is really sure, an atheist simply chooses not to believe (or remains skeptic like me.)
I hope you see how I see atheism to be a bit removed from the practice of Christianity. I see no hipocrisy to it. 
Sure, one second. I’ll give you an American one. I think its fair to say that Europeans are overall less religious than Canadiansm who are somewhat less religious than the USA.
We are working with the assumption that youth are less religious rather than reporting as atheist,right? Practise, attendance, and affiliation can be measured, belief is trickier. Pollsters seem to ask about practises in any case.
Scroll down to “Religious Affiliation by Age” for US stats.
USA: http://www.pewforum.org/Unaffiliated/nones-on-the-rise.aspx
Statistics Canada gets right to the point with a chart: http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/11-008-x/2006001/c-g/4097582-eng.htm
It was found here, with other charts: http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/11-008-x/2006001/9181-eng.htm
Good enough?
How does that work? I’m not trying to be funny or dismissive; I actually want to know more about it.
According to the illustrious Frank, you just gotta try really hard and someday you’ll be a professional Catholic, as opposed to an amateur Catholic who is just learning the ropes. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that he has no idea what he’s talking about. Please clarify.
Most experts agree that the number of secular Americans has probably doubled in the past three decades – growing especially fast among the young. It is thought to be the fastest-growing major “religious” demographic in the country.
From here: Rising atheism in America puts ‘religious right on the defensive’
the_diego does not believe, but attends church for other reasons. (S)he practises the ritual, but does not believe in its efficacy. Case in point: when I visit my folks for supper, they’ll say “Lets say grace”. I just go through the motions for their sake.
My reply to the_diego was a play on that. I’m a non practising Catholic atheist because once you are baptised, the Catholic church forever considers you Catholic. For example, if you blaspheme and are excommunicated, you are an excommunicated Catholic. There is not escape.
No they’re just louder and generally more obnoxious.
Altho there’s no doubt that younger dudes use the internet more, true atheists are in such a minority that there’s no way the OP’s hypothesis is correct.
About 15-20% of Americans claim “no religion” but only 2% or so claim to be atheists.
Now, if you include agnostics, secularists, and “I went to Sunday school when I was a kid, I dunno man, what does that make me?” vs Born-agains and hardcore believers, then maybe. A lot of Americans are in the “No particular faith but I checked the box Christian” school. They don’t go to church except as a social event, they hold no strong beliefs, etc. Only about 1/3 go to Church on a regular basis, etc.
In order for the Op hypothesis to be correct= 2% of America would have to use the internet more than the other 70% or so. Impossible. Hell, there may be more dudes of the Jewish religion than actual atheists.
I wasn’t really advancing a hypothesis, but ok. Why does your reasoning assume that the internet is made up only of the good ole USA? European countries have significantly higher levels of irreligiosity, and the population of Europe is larger than that of the US.
My guess is you have some confirmation bias issues of your own.
Thanks for trying to set up a poll, but yes, the “Is there a God” question is not at all what I was asking about. Your poll does suggest that atheists outnumbering believers on the internet is not an untenable proposition though.
ETA: Yes folks, I do know about the multiquote function, and apologise for not using it.
Thanks, I get it. Succinct and complete explanation. I never realized that the Catholic Church had so much in common with the Hotel California.
Oh yes, including the pretty, pretty boys and the stabbing with steely knives.
“According to a 2005 Eurostat Eurobarometer poll, 52% of European Union citizens responded that “they believe there is a God”, whereas 27% answered that “they believe there is some sort of spirit or life force” and 18% that “they do not believe there is a spirit, God, nor life force””
Of that 18% , only some are actually hard-core atheists.
You’re still wrong.
[Moderator Note]
PandaBear77, religious jabs are not permitted in GQ, so let’s not indulge at jabs against atheists either. No warning issued, but don’t do this again.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator