Lay Theism

I noticed this book on my recommended list on Amazon:

• The Book Your Church* Doesn’t Want You to Read
  (* Or Synagogue, Temple, Mosque…)

It reminded me that Christianity was created by our ancestors around 100 generations ago from some of the favorite stories and yarns of that time.  Religious authors took their cues from popular culture and wrote down various versions of the stories being passed and certainly added their own flair.  This is partly why the Bible is contradicatory and inconsistent… it’s not the divine word of God magically transcribed by prophets.  It’s just oral traditional written down by different authors. 

It’s worth reading the first few pages regardless of your point of view.  If you are religious, take a look at the excerpt (scroll to page 28 for the best reading).  After all, you weren’t born a believer, so you may not always be one.  You owe it to yourself to think for yourself.  For instance, I was typically childlike in my thinking up to about age 11 – a good Sunday school kid that sang “Jesus Loves Me” and believed what I was taught (including Santa Claus, Tooth Fairy, etc.).  By the time I was 12, I was baptized and a believer because it seemed like that’s what good Christian boys did.  By 15, I was proselytizing regularly.  By 17, I was acting as a typical hypocritical Christian teenager.  By my early 20s, I started to examine life and the world more critically.  Now in my 40s, I realize that these are all tales told by men, abused by many, and something we would be better off without. 

And what of all the other children in the world born at the same time as I, but to Muslim families, or Hindu, or Buddhist, or Navajo, or Nuer???  Are they all doomed to an afterlife in hell just because they were not fortunate enough to be born to Christian parents?  I don’t think so.  This was organized religion’s undoing for me.  This premise made no sense and caused me to question faith in religion or god.  Why would one (or any) be the right one? 

Easy answer?  They are all wrong.

Start living this life.  It’s the only one you have.

Oh, and if you need guidance for how to live your life, start with The Golden Rule — you’ll be impressed how far that can take you.

As interesting as the book Atheists: A Groundbreaking Study of America’s Nonbelievers is, I think I take issue with its groundbreakingness. 

It suffers from what appears to be very common when studying atheists – the study considers only absolute non-believers (°Faith=zero).  This seems to compromise their study in a number of ways relating to sample size and reasonable cross-section of the population (bias).  I give them credit for trying, but I wonder if it’s possible to do even better… via the Internet.   Their study was entire on paper, mailed to atheist organizations.  Now that fact alone seems to seriously narrow the sample.  My lack of belief is at a place where I would be perfectly happy and enjoy myself in a room full of atheists, but the likelihood of me joining a club that meets face-to-face to chat about is pretty much nil.  (By the way, why do the ffrf and other organizations have to come off so weird? Where are the mainstream non-believers?)

So, the question that floats through my head is, How many people kinda like me are out there?  I wouldn’t presume to be a silent majority, but I think the numbers are probably much higher than estimated even in the US. 

Life without Faith points out a more encouraging result from the UK Times Online.  Has anyone seen a really strong survey or methodology for finding out the true faith makeup of the US population?  Every study I have seen is seriously flawed in some way.