Rather than devout, Americans prefer their candidates to be "somewhat religious;" more than a third of Americans willing to vote for an atheist

with slightly more than a third of respondents saying that if a candidate "doesn't believe in God," it would make little difference to their vote.

In other words, nearly 2/3rds of respondents feel that not believing in God WOULD influence their vote. (And I doubt that that group is largely made up of people who would PREFER to vote for an atheist over a religious candidate.)

I find that shameful.

The key for this leader would be to reach across faith groups, accenting common goals and values.

I just skimmed the article, but I don't see anything that would provide support for this assertion.

I would argue that the key for a prospective atheist leader is to emphasize the importance of good governance and adopting a rational basis for policy-making, and a promise not to inhibit the free exercise of religion for all Americans, and not to favor one religion over others.

In fact, an atheist leader is precisely positioned to make this last promise. No religious leader could honestly claim to be both sincere in his personal belief and impartial with regard to all religions. That's the atheist's advantage.

Many Americans are even willing to vote for an atheist, with slightly more than a third of respondents saying that if a candidate "doesn't believe in God," it would make little difference to their vote.

Great news! I hope it's an accurate reflection of the way people feel and the way they vote.

That said, I see this is just more evidence that Dawkins and the other foul-mouthed New atheists are merely "noise machines" that deserve whatever discrimination befalls them!

Especially since we now know it's only 2/3's of voters.

LOL! So it's supposed to be good news that "only" 2/3 of people in a major Western country, in fact the biggest and richest one of all, would refuse to vote for someone on the basis of their lack of belief in a supernatural being.

"Many Americans are even willing to vote for a black person, with slightly more than a third of respondents saying that if a candidate "isn't the proper color" it would make little difference to their vote."
or how about,
"Many Americans are even willing to vote for a Jew, with slightly more than a third of respondents saying that if a candidate "hasn't accepted our Lord Jesus into their heart" it would make little difference to their vote."
Wait a second, that looks bigoted and extreme.
Maybe it needs framing?

Martin,
As I have noted here many times, we atheists have a serious image problem. The question then is how do we build a stronger, more positive image?

In contrast to the New Atheists' "us vs. them" rhetoric and their doomsday scenarios, when you actually look at the data, it's encouraging that more than a third of Americans really don't care if a candidate is religious or not, and that the majority of Americans have reservations about a candidate who is too extreme in their beliefs.

So given that tens of millions of American adults would be open to an atheist political candidate, the next step is to think about how we as a community can improve our image and build even more support among the public.

At the local level, as individuals, candidates, and as groups, we can set a positive example of leadership by working together with a diversity of faith groups around common goals and values. Moreover, it's important that we don't turn inwards and only interact with people like ourselves, but build community ties that bridge social groups.

At the national level, we should similarly offer a positive message that emphasizes shared values and beliefs, working with many religious organizations on a diversity of issues.

If you would like those polls numbers to go up, this is the only way forward.

Matthew,
I actually live in Sweden, a country where actively religious people are in the minority. 'New atheism' is simply a term to label outspoken rationalism - a philosophical viewpoint that is not exactly rare over here.
Criticizing religious teachings that clash with empirical evidence is not a problem in europe and those that promote irrationality in opposition to reason ARE liable to be held up to ridicule. When you make statements about an 'atheist noise machine' you are not only labeling your compatriots in the USA, you are labeling many of us foreign non believers also.
WE are not going to change tack to suit YOUR local political agenda because we realize that it was only by adopting this irreverent approach that superstition was overcome. Indeed it is not in our interests to be silent or over-respectful in regards to the religious as it is easy for superstition to gain a foothold in the nations consciousness, either through religious promotion or equally ridiculous new age thinking.
I made the point over on Chris Mooneys blog that the ultimate solution in your country must be the encouragement of critical thinking skills in the population at large. Its not going to be easy, and it is a long term goal, but without it you are only putting out brushfires, not tackling the source of the problem.

Martin,
"Improving critical thinking" is a well worn cliche but I am afraid it remains a democratic ideal that is nearly impossible to attain. Neither religion nor atheism are typically "cognitive" choices, with people reasoning through beliefs and ideas and arriving at a particular religious or non-religious view. (A recent study of the religious views of scientists at the journal Social Problems shows this fairly clearly. I plan to blog about this soon.)

Rather both are very much social and emotional processes. Everyone is a cognitive miser, including atheists and even Swedes! And if the majority discourse at atheist blogs is any measure, critical thinking is a course that needs to be added to the curriculum at the Richard Dawkins School of Communication. ;-)

Best,
Matt

Matthew, you should indeed blog more on published studies. You tend to pick up a lot of criticism on scienceblogs for presenting viewpoints that lack an obvious empirical basis so it would be good to see exactly what you are basing your assertions upon. By the way, I'm not a Swede myself. I grew up in Ireland, typical Roman Catholic upbringing, church, confession, etc. Its not a fundamentalist mindset but its certainly a non questioning one. But one day I switched on the TV and a program came on called The Royal Society Christmas Lectures, a BBC educational series. This one was about evolution and presented by an English professor who asked some questions that quite simply made me think. And I'm certain that I'm not alone in this experience
If you have a quarter of the success of 'the richard dawkins school of communication' you will be doing very well Matthew, so my best to you too.

I did political research for a while after getting out of grad school, so I question whether polling samples are all that representative.

That being said, 1/3 is actually quite a good number. Imagine you have 100 Americans. 33 say a candidate's religious beliefs or lack thereof won't effect their votes. 40 will actually vote. 21 will be needed to win. You have potentially more votes than you need if you can mobilize this group.

Also, the 2/3 said it would effect their vote NOT that they would NEVER vote for an atheist. If asked, I would say that a candidate being opposed to gay marriage would effect my vote. Right now, no major Democratic candidates for president supports equal marriage rights for gay people. But you can be darned well sure that I'll be voting Democrat next year.

Martin,
I obviously cause a lot of cognitive dissonance for many members of the atheist net-roots when I argue for a scientific and evidence-based approach to these issues and questions. So it is not surprising that they criticize or ignore the data that I cite, the studies I refer to, or the theories that support my reservations. Indeed, students at the Richard Dawkins School of Communication are surprisingly anti-scientific when it comes to thinking systematically about communication and the public. Ironically, emotion and rhetoric rule the camp rather than reason.

LOL! So it's supposed to be good news that "only" 2/3 of people in a major Western country, in fact the biggest and richest one of all, would refuse to vote for someone on the basis of their lack of belief in a supernatural being.

LOL!

I don't see your point. The US has long been rich and the general populace has long held all sorts of stupid beliefs (see, for instance, Twain). Haven't you come to terms with this yet?

And I'm sure if we were to look at Britain or France we'd find plenty of stupidity there, too. We could start by looking at football, perhaps?

Nisbet: "I obviously cause a lot of cognitive dissonance for many members of the atheist net-roots when I argue for a scientific and evidence-based approach to these issues and questions. So it is not surprising that they criticize or ignore the data that I cite, the studies I refer to, or the theories that support my reservations."

To be fair, though, you aren't always clear on what your sources and evidence are, and you do sometimes cite people, like Shermer, who are kinda sorta correct but flawed, or David Sloan Wilson, whose case was pretty weak.

When PZ Myers or Larry Moran rail at you, it doesn't mean a whole lot, since they are all too often blind partisans, but when Mark Hoofnagle has some choice words, you may want to think twice. It can be very easy to become extremist in one's anti-extremism, so to speak, and mirror the very faults in your opponents. I know I've done that from time to time.

'Neither religion nor atheism are typically "cognitive" choices, with people reasoning through beliefs and ideas and arriving at a particular religious or non-religious view.'

Excuse me, Mr. Nisbet, but surely you aren't claiming that from a purely rational, evidence-based standpoint there are equal grounds for believing and not believing in God?

Surely you aren't claiming that reason is silent on the truth value of religious propositions?

Could you clarify what you meant, please?

JJ,
The only thing I have ever seen from Hoofnagle is a sophomoric post where he displays a bunch of cards, so I didn't think a reply was merited. Let me know if there is anything of substance and I will take a look.

--Matt

Aloysius,
To clarify, I'm not talking about the merits of the philosophical arguments for or against religious/supernatural belief.

My point is that many atheists arrive at their disbelief not through a rigorous intellectual process where they weigh and assess evidence and then arrive at an informed conclusion. Instead, their atheism is the product of family socialization, friendship or spousal ties, dramatic life experiences, or other emotional and personal reasons. These atheists know very little about the philosophical tradition in favor of non-belief, instead religious skepticism just makes intuitive, personal, or emotional sense.

Oran Kelly says, "I don't see your point."

I rest my case.

Nisbet: "The only thing I have ever seen from Hoofnagle is a sophomoric post where he displays a bunch of cards"

Errm, he also recently pointed out that Shermer's statement about "anti-something" movements wasn't quite correct.

As for the post that you had in mind, yes, he did mangle a fair amount of what you were saying, but you did make a half-accurate statement about atheism and civil rights, so his response is understandable. Also, PZ and Dawkins are persuasive framers, though they'd be loathe to admit it, which also skewed his take.

Nisbet: "I didn't think a reply was merited"

May I remind you of the last few paragraphs of the Washington Post article that Mooney cited:

"So is silence the best way to deal with myths? Unfortunately, the answer to that question also seems to be no.

"Another recent study found that when accusations or assertions are met with silence, they are more likely to feel true, said Peter Kim, an organizational psychologist at the University of Southern California. He published his study in the Journal of Applied Psychology."

There probably isn't much point in dealing with Hoofnagle's old post directly now because it is so old, but you should at least respond to your current accusers. It is perhaps past time to detail your case against the New Atheists, complete with the cited sources. I can think of a few things to say on that, but my biggest beef with the New Atheists is that they seem more interested in partisanship than in getting the facts straight, rather than their failures as communicators.

"My point is that many atheists arrive at their disbelief not through a rigorous intellectual process where they weigh and assess evidence and then arrive at an informed conclusion. Instead, their atheism is the product of family socialization, friendship or spousal ties, dramatic life experiences, or other emotional and personal reasons. These atheists know very little about the philosophical tradition in favor of non-belief, instead religious skepticism just makes intuitive, personal, or emotional sense."

I am arriving very late in a discussion that appears to have ended. I have a couple of questions about your statement, Matthew.

Have any sociologists actually done a study to determine the actual mode of arrival at atheism? Even if atheists have become doubters because of the environmental influences that you mention, does this necessarily mean that they are not familiar with the arguments against the supernatural?

Regardless of whether or not atheists have become disbelievers through critical thinking, I cannot envision how any believers, otherwise intelligent or not, could arrive at religious belief *solely* on the basis of critical evaluation of the evidence.

There simply are no good empirical-logical reasons for belief and religious apologetics is riddled with philosophical tension and patent "excuses". In debate with religionists, I repeatedly observe that their thinking is distorted by an attempt to reconcile their arguments to the fact that there is no internal consistency underlying theological inventions.

I don't think that the real issue concerns how a person arrived at belief so much as it is related to this phenomenon of distortion so as to *maintain* belief.

Religious dogma, particularly fundamentalist dogma, forces believers to exclude critical thinking regardless of their cognitive abilities in other areas. I think that the theocratic mind-set is truly problematic as a manifestation of mind control. This problem most naturally persists in uneducated nations with econopolitical causes for discontent. However, your statistic of the 2/3 who would vote for a religious candidate purely to avoid an atheist is a horrifying indictment of American attitudes. This is the sort of thinking that put Bush into office twice!

I am intrigued by how this religiosity has maintained its grip on the US, but I think that part of the problem can be blamed on the fact that religion, and its anti-logical ramifications, has been protected from criticism for too long.

"Regardless of whether or not atheists have become disbelievers through critical thinking, I cannot envision how any believers, otherwise intelligent or not, could arrive at religious belief *solely* on the basis of critical evaluation of the evidence."

Envisionable or not, that has been my path. I am a reformed Atheist, now a devout Roman Catholic. I evaluated the evidence: eyewitness testimony, accuracy of the model's predictions (Book of Jeremiah), philosophical arguments-and wagers- pro and con, sociological value, and evidence against (zero). It has not affected my lifelong love of science and discovery one whit. If anything, it has had the opposite effect, and I am liberated from my former dogmatic refusal to entertain the existence of anything beyond man's capability to measure or understand. I can even entertain the possibility that there are structures smaller than atoms, which we will never be able to detect, or a multiplicity of dimensions outside of the 4 our perceptions are confined to, both concepts those hampered by a need always to have evidence must refuse to entertain.

Carlos, we can indeed measure structures stronger than atoms. Physicists do this routinely, every single day, even from the depths of their close-minded materialism.

Mr. Nisbet, most people make most of their decisions for primarily emotional reasons, and their stances on atheism or theism are no different. Surely this is irrelevant. Since logical and empirical reasoning quite firmly point towards at the very least a position of profound skepticism towards all supernatural claims, do those of us who value and (attempt to) cultivate rational decision-making not have a positive duty to present this case to the public as Dawkins does?

Smaller, not stronger. That's what I get for typing under the influence of no coffee.

"Carlos, we can indeed measure structures stronger than atoms. Physicists do this routinely, every single day, even from the depths of their close-minded materialism."

You meant smaller I am sure. So did I. I meant to say smaller than sub-atomic particles. My apologies. Strings, Quantum Gravity Loops, that sort of thing. A great many brilliant scientists toil at the theories describing these structures. None of them can be fairly called close[d]-minded materialists. It's the Newtonians you have to worry about.

But most of the scientists who study string theory or Loop Quantum Gravity or causal sets are in fact closed-minded materialists: non-theists whose view of the physical world is itself purely physical. Strings and Calabi-Yau 3-folds and causal sets and so on are not beyond Man's capacity to understand, model, and study using purely naturalistic techniques. There is no theology in physics. Sorry.

"Envisionable or not, that has been my path."

Carlos, I highlighted *solely* for a reason. Unless you were raised exclusively by atheists in a solitary jungle camp in darkest Erewhon, I expect that you were exposed to Christianity from earliest childhood onward.

As I understand it, Catholicism does not preclude an acceptance of scientific knowledge (as do the Biblical Literalist denominations).

Judging by your depiction of superstring theory, you are equating God to quantum foam. God appears, by this account, to have shrunk considerably!

"There is no theology in physics. Sorry."

Or consistency. One can "understand" Strings, 3-folds, casual sets, AND God. One can also model them, but you cannot directly study that which you cannot really detect or actually measure. You can only theorize about them and attempt to falsify your predictions. If they can be falsified, they are untrue. If they can't be falsified, they may or may not be true, but Real Scientists are compelled to argue they should not be taught in schools or adhered to by Supreme Court Justices.

"Carlos, I highlighted *solely* for a reason."

Well then your statement is valueless, really, because you cannot demonstrate that anyone has never heard of Christianity.

I WAS an atheist, and a serious one, from the time I was 12 until the time I was 30. An agnostic (developing an open mind) until I was 40. I shocked to the core every single one of my friends and family, but I did so on the evidence, nonetheless.

Carlos, I worry that you may be setting yourself up as a prime example of how even well-intentioned, science-friendly theism genuinely by its very nature distorts the whole idea of scientific inquiry. The simple fact of the matter is that there is nothing in the entire universe we can study and measure and test "directly". We never see an apple; our eyes detect photons which bounced off an apple, and our brains process this data to produce a perception of the apple in our minds, but it is impossible to gain any data about the apple without the use of intermediaries like the photons. The process of using our very own natural eyes to "see" an apple is the same as the process of looking at the data gathered by a particle detector to "measure" subatomic processes. Everything is a theory. Nothing is ever 100% absolute rock-hard no-questions-asked certainty, because you can never have perfect information about anything. Believing that a human can absorb perfect and eternal Truth--about God or apples or strings, it makes no difference--is simply wrong. It is a testable belief about the way the world operates which can be and has been demonstrated to be false. If you don't understand that, then--I don't mean this to be insulting, I am just stating what I have gathered through long and painful experience to be the truth as best we can know it--you really don't understand the processes of science.

"Believing that a human can absorb perfect and eternal Truth--about God or apples or strings, it makes no difference--is simply wrong."

Sorry, you lost me. Whoever suggested that?

"It is a testable belief about the way the world operates which can be and has been demonstrated to be false."

What is? The above statement about the apples n'at? Yeah, I guess.

I am sorry for your long and painful experiences, but I'm pretty sure I understand the processes of science just fine, thanks.

"Sorry, you lost me. Whoever suggested that?"

I believe they call him the Pope.