Lay Theism

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.

Atheism, Polling, Religion, Statistics book, study

I thought I would try something here…

A Belief-o-meter!  Let me know if you think I have it close.  I’m afraid I may have the labels all wrong.  And where do Televangelists go?  What about that Catholic girl you knew in high school that smoked weed and screwed everything in sight, but confessed weekly?

So, basically, Atheist = Absolute Zero and the real nutballs that would kill or die strictly for their religious dogma (vs. say dying for freedom or liberty) would be, for example, Islamic Jihadists = 100.  Then you have all the zombies in between… the folks that go through life never really questioning the odd traditions that they were brought up with.  The Sunday/Wednesday Christians (very popular with the Southern Baptists), the Cussin’ Christians (it’s OK to say ‘Fuck’… WHAT!?  It’s just a word.  It’s not like I said goddammit), the don’t-want-to-go-to-hell Easter Only Christians, and all the rest.

Degrees of Belief

Comments?  Suggestions?

Or, maybe this was just a weird idea and I should scrap the whole thing.

Atheism, Graphics, Religion belief, faith, god, purpose, study, theist