Puzzled

[fabrisse]

There's a headline at The Washington Post stating that 90% of all Americans believe in God including the 1 in 5 who are Atheists. I haven't read the article yet, but someone is confused by the definition of atheist, right?

Comments

[eanja]

I glanced at the article, and it says 1 in 5 self-proclaimed atheists believe in god or "a universal spirit," so my guess is they're including anyone who believes in karma, or tao, or new age sorts of things.

I do think that some people call themselves atheists simply because they don't believe in a concrete specifically formed God such as they were raised with, although I would consider having some undefined sense of spirituality to be a form of agnosticism. (I have at least one book at home that argues that you can't believe in tao w/out being an atheist, for example, which I'm sure many atheists would find inherently contradictory.)

[siderea]

I have at least one book at home that argues that you can't believe in tao w/out being an atheist, for example, which I'm sure many atheists would find inherently contradictory.

Periodically, over on atheism we go 'round the block again about how "atheism" only means you do not believe in the existence of gods, not anything else, not even other supernatural phenomena. Pragmatically most atheists seem also to be, more generally, naturalists, but it's not definitional.

[eanja]

I suppose at that point it starts getting into how you define tao as well as atheism, because there I've read enough books on the subject by deeply religious people who seem to take the approach that tao is somewhere between the holy spirit and a universal manifestation of God's will.

But in this specific instance, I have the impression that the poll they used was considering at least some forms of naturalism to be religious belief.

I don't actually have any idea of how much consensus there is among atheists on what that means; it seems to me there would naturally be a broad spectrum of interpretations, just as there is with religion.

One of the convenient things about just labeling myself as agnostic is that I get to avoid fussing with such specifics nearly completely.

[mystery-sock.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I read that headline, and thought "Er, your methodology is somewhat questionable". I didn't have a chance to read any of the associated headlines, so I don't know if it was just shit copyediting, or a shit premise, or shit results that mean nothing.