Dan Norder’s point is good: men would probably be predominant in any confrontational environment such as online forums, whether by nature or just as an artifact of socialization
No idea where “here” is for you, so I cannot imagine how large is the divergence, but: you mention that you got that impression from US media that you have access to. That is interesting in that some of the more vocal/confrontational US atheists would claim that our media is full of pandering to the believing majority, but consider the possibility of confirmation bias even in the anecdotes related here.
IME a huge chunk of the American society may be believers in some religion but are NOT particularly pious – their belief is a personal thing, sometimes a sociocultural incidental and they won’t particularly mind if someone else agrees or disagrees; but of course you’ll hardly hear of them as they are ***not ***the ones who’ll be shouting it out in public. Similarly, exported media will likely NOT be the material that makes a big deal of religious matters that may be relevant in an American context but baffling in that of other cultures. Car chases and explosions OTOH have no religion ( )
In the US, it has been mentioned before, polls usually give much larger results of people identifying as “nonreligious” as opposed to explicitly “atheist”, and like it has been stated, it’s probably because this latter term has acquired a confrontational/hostile connotation that many people would rather not deal with.
I actually laughed in amazement at this. In the part of the US where I live, it is assumed you are a Christian, and I’d say about forty percent of people are displaying religious symbols in some way. I hear church or Jesus mentioned daily. I know two atheists and one agnostic (I’m married to one of the atheists).
I’m British, living in France - it was the UK I was thinking of, rather than France (I don’t yet know enough French people to be able to make sweeping generalisations about their culture - give me time ). But what you say about semantics makes more sense - that there are people who are atheist, they just don’t like the word. Clearly it’s a stigmatised concept in a way I hadn’t really understood - religion is a much bigger thing in the US, culturally, than I’d thought. Surprisingly so, in a Western country IMO.
I’m aware that I’m making myself sound like a complete moron here, and for sure it won’t be the last time, but I’m genuinely staggered at the concept that people consider atheism as such a weird, out-there idea that it needs special interest groups so you all can meet other people that don’t believe in God. I don’t know, maybe I lead a particularly deviant life or something, and most people in the UK/Europe are religious and surrounded by other religious people, but I don’t think that’s the case. People do go to church - every village and town has a church - but they tend to be elderly people, and there aren’t huge numbers of them. (I think - obviously, I don’t have the most experience in this field - but it’s something that the telly does occasional programmes on, declining church attendance despite there being a state church.)
I don’t know about that; I do think there’s a difference. A whole lot of people (my parents included) have simply been raised without religion. And a lot of those people just don’t worry about it, they don’t care, they have not taken the time to think through the whole thing and say “I think there is no God and I am an atheist.” To me atheism implies that a person has an opinion on the subject, and many people don’t.
That said, I do live in an area where there are not a ton of religious people. Some people are and some people aren’t. When people talk about a pervasive atmosphere of Christianity in the US–on a local level–and hostility towards atheism, I’m always surprised.
I agree with this. I don’t believe in unicorns, either, but I don’t feel the need to join a unicorn-non-believers’ group. However, a lot of men would, I suspect.
I’m male, and I think men are just more likely than women to join groups that involve lots of philosophical chin-stroking and arguments.
Its a difficult question because definitions are not easy.
My family is Unitarian. There are two atheists (my husband and daughter), one deist (me) and a complete and total agnostic. Of the four of us, my son the agnostic is the “least religious” - he doesn’t care at all one way or the other. The most “religious” are my atheist daughter - who definitely has an opinion on the non-existence of God and will argue it with quite a bit of spirit - but has a deep spiritual nature internal to herself, a dedication to the religious community she is involved in - and myself.
So, when answering that question, I’m not an atheist, but I am religious. My daughter is an atheist and is religious. My son is not an atheist and not religious, my husband is an atheist and not religious (but will identify as a UU).
I live in Texas, and yes, around here it’s assumed that you’re Christian, and either Catholic or Southern Baptist, generally split along racial lines. Some non Hispanic blacks and whites are Catholic, and some Hispanics are Baptist, but if you wanted to do cold readings in a public place, you’d probably get a pretty high success rate just by looking at people’s skin tones and listening to their speech.
Atheists are regarded as immoral, and are suspected of Satanism. The fact that an atheist doesn’t believe in God, and therefore doesn’t believe in Satan doesn’t make a dent. Atheists are generally told that they HATE God, but that they will learn the truth.
I’m seriously afraid to have a Darwin fish or Flying Spaghetti Monster emblem on my car. I think my car will get vandalized.
I don’t know how many answering machines have a message ending with “Have a BLESSED day” or “Jesus loves you!”
Where & when I grew up (Southern California in the 50s-70s), church was as you describe: Something elderly people did out of ancient habit.
Where I am now (Midwest in 2011), you cannot admit in public that you are non-christian without being shunned and assumed to be utterly amoral. All public figures must be Episcopalian, Methodist, Lutheran or Baptist. All politicians must announce their Jesus allegiance and if it isn’t one of those 4, they’re never going to be elected. A local TV personality who came out as agnostic or Muslim would be hounded off the air. A Jew or Catholic might survive but not without a fight. Lack of Big 4 religion is considered to be equivalent to an utter lack of morals or ethics.
I exaggerate only slightly for effect here.
The extreme overt publicly-proclaimed religiosity is a fairly recent development, say the last 20 years or so. And its still pretty regional. California remains *relatively *light on religion despite the fact it was the incubator for several of the christian mega-churches. These use a thin veneer of Jesus!! to cover for selling a feel-good-about-your-suburban-entitled-self fund raising program.
Nonetheless, I’m sure a Brit would find California to be waay more christian than they’re used to.
I should also mention that after I’ve done something particularly nice for someone, they’ll thank me and tell me what a good Christian I am. I have to admit that I’ll say something like “I’m an atheist, actually” and I’ll enjoy watching their face when that sinks in. I realize that this counteracts my act of niceness, but I have to be nice to ME now and then, too.
I go to a UU church, and this is exactly how it plays out. The church itself is slightly bent female. When the Humanist group gets together, it is almost all male. We usually have one or two females. The Wiccans meet the same day upstairs. It’s all female.
Honestly, the Humanist group can get into some pretty dull conversations. Occasionally something science related comes up and I get interested, but the philosophical stuff is horrible.
As LSLGuy said, there are big differences from one part of the country to another. I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, and around here nobody ever talks about religion. There are churches here, and there are undoubtedly some religious people. In my day to day life, however, the subject is simply never brought up, and most people I deal with don’t seem to be religious at all.
I used to attend meetings of a local skeptics group, comprising atheists & agnostics & apatheists and antitheists. It was pretty evenly divided between men & women. I wonder if the “sausagefest” aspect is mostly an online thing.
Religious women are less likely to admit having pre-marital sex, I think. Well, Christian ones, anyway. But in the holiness church in which I grew up, a good number of supposedly-saved girls were giving it up, and I knew of a quite a few babies born “prematurely,” seven and a half months after a very hasty wedding. Of course that’s just the Church of God in Christ, but my high school & college experience of Catholic schoolgirls leads me to think COGIC was hardly unique.
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