Comments on: A Survey of the Non-Religious

By: Kurt

Kurt — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 02:28:03 +0000

Actually, there have been book-length surveys of atheists before, specifically: “Atheists: A Groundbreaking Study of America’s Nonbelievers,” by psychologists Bruce Hunsberger and Bob Altemeyer. Highly recommended and available on amazon.

By: Luke

Luke — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 16:19:58 +0000

Its not that canadian atheists were specifically more satisfied with life. its that the published norms for the life satisfaction research measure (Diener’s satisfaction with life scale) listed older canadians as among the happiest group listed as being surveyed with that particular instrument.

By: Luke

Luke — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 16:18:00 +0000

Also, the fact that atheists are more educated and wealthy and white is not due to the sample of this study being skewed. In fact those characteristics are representative of the non religious in the general population. General pop surveys such as the Pew forum show that atheists and agnostics in general are more educated, wealthy, unmarried, and male. So if this survey would have made a specific effort to recruit non educated, non affluent americans who were non religious, that would have been LESS representative.

By: Luke

Luke — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 16:14:55 +0000

The curvilinear belief and happiness relationship (i.e., that the strongly religious and strongly non religious have higher life satisfaction and emotional stability than the “fence sitters” or not-sure-god-exists) holds after controlling for income, education, age, and marital status.

That is to say, the higher happiness of the confidently religious or non religious than the unsure is not due to those demographic factors.

By: Renacier

Renacier — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 11:21:53 +0000

Reasonable Doubts Podcast (episode 32) does an in-depth look at this survey. It comes highly recommended.

By: keddaw

keddaw — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 09:20:19 +0000

Back off there guys, this is statistically dubious at best.

Atheists (or people not of faith) tend to be more educated and wealthier than the average person of faith. This skews the results massively as people who have a solid job and are secure financially will almost certainly be more satisfied with life.

Try this again and choose well-off middle/upper class white men (most were men!) and you will find similar results.

To have a proper study you have to factor in wealth/age/gender effects and then you can see if atheists are happier with their lot in life than those waiting for eternal happiness.

By: Taisen

Taisen — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 09:18:57 +0000

Heh the thing that immediately struck me was that atheists are “less agreeable”! OK, perhaps this is a reference to the “agreeableness” category in “Big Five” personality theory, but it amused anyway.

Those who say that atheism is a religion will point to the “high group identification” as support for their viewpoint.

By: Rokugo

Rokugo — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 00:50:46 +0000

How can we use this information to our advantage?

By going to spiritual and not atheist events to meet women.

Oh, you meant “we” as in atheists!

By: Tom

Tom — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 23:41:01 +0000

Those New Atheists sure are young whipper-snappers at average age 47!

One implication is that not having a high level of non-family confidants makes you more likely to be an atheist. Would confirm some people’s belief’s that atheists are “unfriendly,” and highlight a big reason why Hemant chose his blog title.

If more spiritual atheists are women, it is strange to then see that their life satisfaction is lower. This contradicts general population surveying which shows women to always be more satisfied.

Being highly agreeable is typically not seen as a “good” trait amongst atheists. You can’t just agree to anything, eh? But having little agreeableness isn’t necessarily seen as a bad thing by us, which these findings could support.

I love data!

By: Neon Genesis

Neon Genesis — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 22:07:25 +0000

There was an episode of the Reasonable Doubts podcast awhile back which Luke Galen is a host of where they discussed the findings of this survey in greater detail. One interesting point they brought up was that Canadian atheists were apparently the most satisfied with their lives of all the groups surveyed.