The number of individuals within the United States who don’t feel they belong to any religion has grown dramatically in recent times, and “the nothings” are actually larger than any single religious group. According to the General Social Survey, religiously unaffiliated people made up only about 5% of the U.S. population within the Nineteen Seventies. This percentage began to extend within the Nineteen Nineties and is now around 30%.
At first glance, some might assume that which means almost one in three Americans is an atheist, but that is much from true. As a matter of fact, Only about 4% of adults within the United States discover as atheists.
As sociologists WHO Study religion In the US, we wanted to seek out out more in regards to the gap between these percentages and why some people discover as atheists while others who don’t have any religious affiliation don’t.
Many shades of “none”
The religiously unaffiliated are a various group. Some still attend church services, say they’re not less than somewhat religious and express a point of belief in God – though they have an inclination to do these items to a lesser extent than individuals who discover with a faith.
There are even differences in the best way individuals who don’t have any religious affiliation discover themselves. When asked about their religion in surveys, the unassigned answers were “agnostic,” “no religion,” “nothing in particular,” “none,” and so forth.
Only about 17% of non-religious people In surveys, they explicitly discover themselves as “atheists.”. Mostly atheists reject religion and non secular concepts more actively than other non-religious people.
Our current research examines two questions related to atheism. First: What makes an individual? kind of more likely to discover as an atheist? Second, what makes someone kind of more likely to do that? adopt an atheistic worldview over time?
Beyond belief – and disbelief
Consider the primary query: Who would likely discover as an atheist? To answer this, we must first take into consideration what atheism actually means.
Not all religious traditions emphasize this Belief in a deity. However, within the US context, particularly inside traditions reminiscent of Christianity, atheism is commonly equated with saying that somebody doesn’t consider in God. But in certainly one of our surveys, we found that amongst U.S. adults who say, “I don’t believe in God.” only about half select “atheist.”when asked about their religious identity.
In other words, rejecting belief in God is in no way a sufficient condition for identifying as an atheist. Why do some individuals who don't consider in God discover as atheists while others don't?
Our study found that related to an individual's likelihood of identifying as an atheist are plenty of other social forces beyond their disbelief in God—particularly stigma.
Many Americans consider atheists with them Distrust and dislike. It is noteworthy that some social science surveys within the US include questions on how much tolerance people have for atheists alongside questions on Tolerance towards racists and communists.
This stigma signifies that being an atheist comes with potential social costs, particularly in certain communities. We see this dynamic playing out in our data.
For example, political conservatives are less more likely to discover as atheists, even in the event that they don't consider in God. Almost 39% of people that describe themselves as “extremely conservative” say they don’t consider in God discover as an atheist. In contrast, 72% of people that describe themselves as “extremely liberal” say they don’t consider in God.
We argue that this is probably going a function of the larger negative views of atheists in politically conservative circles.
Adopt atheism
However, saying you don't consider in God is the strongest indicator of identifying as an atheist. this results in our second research query: What aspects make it kind of likely that somebody will lose their faith over time?
In a second survey-based studyFrom one other representative sample of nearly 10,000 U.S. adults, we found that about 6% of people that reported having some level of belief in God at age 16 progressed as adults to say, “I don't consider in God.”
Whoever falls into this group is not any coincidence.
Our evaluation finds, perhaps unsurprisingly, that the stronger an individual's belief in God at age 16, the less likely they’re to have adopted an atheist worldview as an adult. For example, fewer than 2% of those that said as teenagers, “I knew God was real and I had no doubts about it” later adopted an atheist worldview. This compares to over 20% of those that said at age 16, “I didn't know if there was a God and I didn't think there was any way to find out.”
However, our evaluation shows that several other aspects increase or decrease the likelihood of adopting an atheist worldview.
For example, no matter how strong their youthful faith was, black, Asian and Hispanic Americans were less more likely to later discover as atheists than white people. All other things being equal, individuals in these groups were about 50% to 75% less more likely to adopt an atheist worldview than whites. This could also be due partly to groups that already face stigmatization based on their race or ethnicity being less able or willing to accomplish that Embrace the extra social costs of being an atheist.
On the opposite hand, we discover that adults with more income—no matter how strong their faith was at age 16—usually tend to adopt this attitude they don't consider in God. Each increase from one income level to a different on an 11-point scale increases the likelihood of adopting an atheist worldview by about 5%.
This might be a function of income providing a buffer against any stigma related to an atheist worldview. For example, higher income may give a person the resources essential to avoid social circles and situations during which being an atheist is perhaps treated negatively.
However, there could also be one other explanation. Some social scientists have suggested that each wealth and faith may also help existential security – the knowledge that tragedy won’t ever occur – and that higher income subsequently reduces the necessity to consider in supernatural powers in any respect.
Such insights are a strong reminder that our beliefs, behaviors and identities should not exclusively our own, but are sometimes shaped by the situations and cultures during which we discover ourselves.
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