No Latin that I know of, but it may well be an example of the Prosecutor’s Fallacy or Confusion of the Inverse: confusing P(Democrat | atheist) with P(atheist | Democrat).
Google tells me that’s “Confusione reciproca” in Latin. In Pig Latin, it’s onfusioncay ofay ethay inverseay, of course.
Anyway, thanks!
Not entirely. Wanting an Amendment repealed is honest, even if perhaps quixotic. It is trying to get around an Amendment which is disingenuous.
Yes, we also have new-agers, mystics, neo-pagans and even Jedi. They all have some sort of faith, even if not a lot of religion.
I think it’s probably safe to say, though, that the number of unaffiliated theists is greater than the number of affiliated atheists (at least, open atheists). So if only 23% of Democrats are unaffiliated, the number of Democratic atheists would be even less than that.
Not to mention Unitarian Universalists.
No disrespect to my UU brethren - just making the point that any of the believers DD lists might be entirely comfortable at a UU church.
I think it could be better said that liberalism is a party of inclusivity as long as there is no harm done (sort of like Jesus, but I digress). What liberals oppose is not religion but intolerance. Most are fine with any and all beliefs that are held personal, but when that starts affecting others in a negative way is where the line is drawn.
This would include hard religious people with thou shalt not … type of thinking but also the preachy there is no God type of atheists. Both show a form of intolerance that disagree with what liberalism typically stands for.
What I also believe you are conflating is the teachings of science, what we have figured out and the teachings of religion. Liberals like to keep those separate and not teach one in a class intended for another.
So for liberals, you determine for yourself if there is a God or not, and how you want to approach it, overall please be a good person, and the freedom extended to you, please also respect that for others. While how you chose to believe how things came about, we will teach what we can prove and try the best we can to not mix in belief with that.
Sure. Lots of people nowadays have faith, but not religion. That also used to be common in the past. Some Presidents belonged to a Church just for the social aspects, which was also common back then, but went out of style. However, some of my friend have done that very thing now.
I have to say that I find it hard to understand why just finding out they had some Jewish ancestors would inspire someone who hadn’t previously been interested in Judaism to run out and convert, but certainly I have encountered such people.
It’s a good thing you qualified that, because I’m not sure that’s true if you considered people’s actual beliefs. More likely there’s about the same number of each. But polls about this topic rarely, if ever, ask about people’s real beliefs, but rather about what religion they belong to. These two things are correlated, but not perfectly.
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Actually the age profile of Catholics and evangelicals is eerily identical; mainline Protestants are slightly older but not much. WHITE American Catholics are pretty elderly as a group, but the average age of American Catholics is held down by the influx of young Hispanic immigrants (Most American Catholics under 30 identify as Hispanic).
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That’s true on a global scale, but in the USA Protestants outnumber Catholics better than two to one.
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OK
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It’s true that most people who change religions are driven by some variation of “feeling more at home in that community”. But the percentage of Catholics who leave for doctrinal reasons is significantly greater than any other group. I think I did overstate the evidence when I said that “most” Catholics who leave do so for doctrinal reasons, though.
Exactly. The religiously unaffiliated are nicknamed the “nones” simply because they check the box “none” when given choices like Roman Catholic, Jewish, Evangelical Protestant, Hindu, Buddhist, etc. Surveys are leaving up the follow-up questions for the “nones” such as, do you believe in a god or gods, or do you believe in supernatural forces, are you not sure, etc.
HERE is a link to a more detailed account of the survey I linked above, which does provide some data there.
According to that, 23% of the population are “none”. Broken down further, 3% identify as atheist (that’s 3% of the whole population, not just of the nones), 4% as agnostic, and 16% as “nothing in particular”. The latter group was asked the followup question “Is religion important to you?”, and almost half said “yes”. I’m seeing a whole lot of people these days describing themselves as “spiritual but not religious”, so I guess that’s where they fit in.
In middle school my youngest, in some ill advised Social Studies discussion, identified themselves as a Sunday School teaching atheist Unitarian Universalist. Which caused the teacher to tell them they couldn’t be an atheist and belong to a church. Which would surprise about half of our congregation - which is also about a quarter Christian. And a quarter “other.” (As far as I know, zero Jedi - but we do have new agers and neo pagans. And Muslims and Jews).
There are also a significant number of Protestants and (especially) Anglicans who move to Catholicism for doctrinal reasons. Sometimes joking referred to as “swimming the Tiber.”
I don’t know what the actual numbers are, but it’s not zero, and it’s a real thing.
Well, yes, of course it is. The poll I just linked to should have the numbers in there somewhere.
Thanks. You do have to wonder about the results when about 7% of “atheists” have some belief in God, including 2% who are absolutely certain. Some people are not using the same definition of “atheist” as the rest of us.
Thanks for that.
…err you do know what the day job of the guy who discovered the Big Bang was, right???
I can’t help but this this question is inspired by being in a bubble. Large parts of the Democratic base are fairly religious, not just minorities but also strong union ruralish white people. But then Democratic party and alienating voter bases have long been a tight combo.
Religions can be quite difficult to pigeonhole, because people believe all sorts of things, and describe those beliefs in all sorts of ways. I knew a fellow once who identified as a Jew, but who also considered it absolutely obvious, how could anyone even deny it, that the Sun was God.
(for those following along, I also recently mentioned this same fellow as identifying as “African-American”, despite being white, because he emigrated from South Africa to the US)
I also knew a different fellow who was adamant in his identification as a Muslim, and followed at least the dietary laws, but also said that he considered that whole “belief in God” thing to be silly.
Shrug. People will be people.
The Tiber swim goes to both banks. A significant number of Episcopalians, for one, used to be Catholic but wanted a church that was more liberal with similar sacraments and rituals.