Is there a way to get religious believers to trust atheists? We already know we’re the least trusted minority group out there — can we change that?

Researchers Will M. Gervais and Ara Norenzayan of the University of British Columbia, Vancouver are back and they believe there is a way.

In the May, 2012 edition of the journal Psychological Science, they lay out one solution:

Remind people of secular authority. In other words, remind them that we place authority in cops and courts (and, implicitly, not god).

For believers, thinking of God, like thinking of social surveillance by peers, increases both public self-awareness… and socially desirable responding… By making people feel that their behavior is being monitored, belief in watchful gods may increase cooperative behavior… As a result, religious people may interpret other people’s belief in watchful gods as a cue that they can be trusted.

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Secular and sacred authority may also serve interchangeable functions in encouraging prosocial behavior, albeit with different implications for distrust of atheists. The view that atheists are untrustworthy because they do not believe that their behavior is monitored by a divine power may erode to the extent that people are aware of effective monitoring by other “higher” (but not supernatural) powers. If so, then reminders of secular authorities that enforce prosocial behavior should reduce believers’ distrust of atheists. Furthermore, this effect should be specific to distrust of atheists, rather than extending to prejudice in general.

Here’s what they did.

In one experiment, participants watched a movie about either a tourist visiting Canada (control group) or the Vancouver police chief giving the year-end report (experimental group). Afterwards, the groups were asked questions that included items dealing with the trustworthiness of atheists (e.g. “In times of crisis, I am more inclined to trust people who are religious”).

What happened? The amount of atheist distrust was lower with the group who watched the video of the cop:

Maybe that was a fluke, though…

So they compared distrust toward atheists with disgust toward homosexuals (both are minorities, with concealable identities, who are seen as “threats” to religious groups). Basically, they wanted to know whether examples of secular authority reduced distrust among atheists or distrust among generally-unliked minority groups.

They gave a (different) group words to unscramble and rearrange. Some of the group members were given words like “civic,” “contract,” “jury,” “court,” and “police.” The others were given random, non-authority-related words.

Then they asked them questions measuring their anti-gay and anti-atheist prejudice.

This time, the anti-gay prejudice didn’t change… but anti-atheist distrust was reduced:

But even if people harbor anti-gay prejudice, do they distrust them like they do atheists?

Time for one last experiment. A different group was chosen and broken up into subgroups. Each was assigned the same unscrambling task as before. Then, in a seemingly unrelated task, they were asked questions specifically about distrust of atheists and gays.

Once again, the effect on distrust of gay people was negligible. But the level of distrust of atheists went down:

So what’s up with that?! Gervais and Norenzayan conclude:

Our three experiments demonstrated that subtle reminders of effective secular authority — secular institutions that help secure cooperation among individuals — reduce religious believers’ distrust of atheists. In addition, we tested and found no support for three theoretically plausible alternative explanations for these findings.

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Although religious prosociality may have served as an initial mechanism for bootstrapping large-scale cooperation in some cultures, cooperative groups may create a variety of secular institutions that also promote cooperation. As reliance on these secular institutions waxes in many societies, the influence of religion wanes… As a result, places that tend to have more effective governments also have much less religious belief (e.g., Scandinavia…).

What can we do with this information? I don’t know about you, but this is my new business card:

(Thanks to Lauren for the link!)

It’s not an American college town. Apparently, Eastern Germany wins the prize:

The statistics are most striking among those under 28 years old: more than 71% of eastern Germans in this age group say they have never believed in the existence of God. That’s nearly as many as in the 38-47 group, of which 72.6% are non-believers.

What the figures mean is that in eastern Germany, very young people are on the same wavelength as people from the middle generation when it comes to belief in God. The political transformation of former East Germany, in other words, hasn’t had much of an effect on people’s ideas about religion. While there are somewhat fewer atheists among young adults aged 28 to 37, where “only” 63.6% say they’ve never been believers, those in the following generation are at least as non-religious as their parents.

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Because results for Germany were divided into East and West, it emerged that former East Germany was by far the most atheistic region on the planet. There, 52.1% of those asked agreed with the statement: “I don’t believe in God.”

This is all according to a new study called “Beliefs about God across Time and Countries” (PDF) conducted by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago.

America has a long way to go…

The Religious News Service headline makes it sound like it’s a bad thing…:

Young ‘Millennials’ losing faith in record numbers

A new study put out by the Public Religion Research Institute and Georgetown’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs explains what’s happening (PDF) to 18-24-year-olds.

When it comes to how their faith is changing, the numbers favor the unaffiliated.

Red has never looked so good:

Not only are Catholicism and Christianity losing ground, the study says that “one-quarter (25%) of Millennials identify as religiously unaffiliated.” Not only that, since only 11% of Millennials were raised without faith, more than half of unaffiliated Millennials left their childhood faith.

Some of them will return to their faiths as they age, “but there’s not a lot of evidence that most will come back,” added [PRRI’s research director Daniel] Cox, who said the trend away from organized religion dates back to the early 1990s.

In case you’re wondering how “unaffiliated” is defined, they’re including anyone who responded to the question “What is your present religion, if any?” with Atheist, Agnostic, or Nothing in Particular. (For what it’s worth, other responses included “Just Christian” (no denomination), Something Else, Refused (to answer), and Unitarian.)

So why is this change happening?

I think the answer is contained in large part in this statement (p. 32 in the report):

Almost two-thirds (64%) of Millennials say that “anti-gay” describes present-day Christianity somewhat or very well. Over 6-in-10 (62%) also believe that present-day Christianity is “judgmental,” while 58% agree that “hypocritical (saying one thing, doing another)” describes present-day Christianity well. Half of Millennials say that “too involved in politics” describes present-day Christianity well.

Christianity represents — to the church’s own detriment — a value system intelligent Millennials want increasingly less association with. Christians are seen as anti-gay, anti-choice, anti-women, anti-sex, anti-intellectual, and pro-bullshit. The younger you are, and the more you’re surrounded by people (like atheists) who make logical, coherent arguments against much of what the church stands for (hopefully with a compassionate heart), the easier it is to realize Christianity isn’t based in truth; it’s based in an archaic and incorrect view of what one group of people (read: men) believes is good for society. Whenever the church figures that out, they’ll have no choice but to adapt (ha!) or watch their numbers dwindle away.

Their power can’t fade quickly enough.

I’ve never seen this before…

A survey conducted by the Montreal-based Association for Canadian Studies has revealed two amazing things:

42 per cent of those polled agreed with the statement “religion is an important part of my life”…

Fewer than half the people surveyed said religion was important to them!

But wait… it gets better:

67 per cent of those surveyed said they trusted “people who are religious” in general, and even more respondents — 73 per cent — expressed trust in “people who are not religious.”

In America, atheists are the least trusted minority group (at 54%). In Canada, at least according to this one study, we’re more trustworthy than people who believe in god. Why that’s the case, they don’t explain, but I’d like to think it’s because we embrace evidence-based truth, whereas religious people adhere to their myths even in the face of reality.

The study also found that only 56% of people ages 18-24 believed in god… so I assume 44% do not?! Incredible.

(Thanks to AxeGrrl for the link)

We tend to think of ethnic minorities as being more religious than the general population, but new data shows this may not be the case any more. The Pew Hispanic Center just released the results of a nationwide poll and found that non-religious Latinos are more numerous than we might think.

In fact, unaffiliated Hispanics — the “nones” — make up 14% of the demographic (compared to 19% of the general population). That’s *huge*. I know, I know, not all of them are “atheists” — but many of them are and there’s no reason to think the proportions are different between the two groups.

Not only that — 50% of unaffiliated Hispanics say religion is not very relevant in their lives!

Half of them!

That means that there are more Latino/a atheists (and apatheists) out there than we previously imagined — people who don’t find religion relevant and who aren’t affiliated with any one particular faith.. Many of them may be looking for an organization to join, a place to discuss their (usually) religious upbringings, somewhere their families feel welcome.

What are we doing to reach out to them and make them feel appreciated?

(via The LatiNone)

Every time that question is asked, everyone always points to this page. It’s a (questionable) source from 1997 saying that atheists constitute 0.2% of the prison population.

Last week, the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life released the results of a survey of professional prison chaplains across the United States. The results (PDF) offer some insight into the religious lives of prisoners. But keep in mind it’s not necessarily accurate — they’re asking chaplains across the country what they think the religious makeup of the prisoners is.

Although chaplains, like all observers, undoubtedly bring their own perspectives and predilections to bear, they also occupy a valuable vantage point as correctional workers who have regular, often positive interactions with inmates and take a strong interest in the role of religion in inmates’ lives.

Ok, so take all these results with a grain of salt.

Here’s the finding that’s relevant to us:

Atheists *might* constitute a larger percentage of prisoners than we previously thought… but we really have no idea:

Obviously, nonreligious means atheists, agnostics, and people who just don’t subscribe to organized religion — we don’t know the breakdown. But 11% overall is much more than anyone has ever said before. Even if it’s accurate, those (likely inflated) results are significantly smaller than the 32% of nonreligious people who make up the general population.

The Pew people say this (emphasis theirs):

Of course, some chaplains may have quite a bit of knowledge and others rather little knowledge about the religious preferences of inmates. And, even if chaplains had perfect information about the relative distribution of religious groups among inmates, these findings are not weighted in proportion to the size of each prison’s population and thus cannot provide an accurate estimate of religious affiliation among the U.S. prison population. Nonetheless, these findings offer an impressionistic picture of the religious context in which chaplains work.

So what percentage of the prison population are atheists? We still don’t know for sure. But it’s less than 11%. Probably a lot less. It’s hard to get accurate information on the subject…

(via Religion Clause)

Gallup has just released its list of the most religious states and the least religious states in the country — all based on how people categorized themselves between the options of “Very religious,” “Moderately religious,” and “Nonreligious.”

In 2009, the last time they released a survey like this, the question was “Is religion an important part of your daily life?” and the options were “Yes” and “No.” (In other words, don’t bother comparing the percentages between then and now — we’re talking about very different questions in the two scenarios.)

Here’s what they found (based on 2011 polling) regarding the states with the highest percentages of “very religious” Americans:

Some things to note:

• Mississippi, once again, is at the top of the list.
• In 2009, Utah didn’t crack the top ten. Now, it’s #2. The difference in question obviously had an impact here.
• Of all the states in the top ten here, Utah also has the highest proportion of nonreligious Americans (28%, compared to Mississippi’s 11%)
• There’s very little change in the past few years.

What about the states with the lowest percentages of “very religious” Americans?

Some things to note:

• Vermont, once again, is at the bottom of the list. Go Vermont!
• Yep, Alaska is on that list. I’m still surprised by that.
• There’s very little change in the past few years.

If you wanted to group the states based on the highest percentage of nonreligious Americans, the chart would look like this:

1) Vermont (58%)
2) New Hampshire (52%)
3) Maine (49%)
4) Massachusetts (47%)
5) Oregon (45%)
6) Alaska (44%)
6) Washington (44%)
8] Connecticut (42%)
9) Nevada (40%)
9) New York (40%)
9) Colorado (40%)
9) Montana (40%)

Gallup summarizes the findings this way — and what a huge understatement they make:

Gallup classifies 40% of Americans nationwide as very religious — based on their statement that religion is an important part of their daily life and that they attend religious services every week or almost every week. Another 32% of Americans are nonreligious, based on their statement that religion is not an important part of their daily life and that they seldom or never attend religious services. The remaining 28% of Americans are moderately religious, because they say religion is important but that they do not attend services regularly or because they say religion is not important but still attend services.

I want to point that out again because it’s a huge freaking deal.

Nearly a third of our country can be categorized as nonreligious. A THIRD! That is the highest number I’ve ever seen describing the “nones.” Just to be clear, they’re not all atheists — I’m sure some would call themselves “spiritual but not religious” and many of them still wrongly believe in some higher power — but organized religion doesn’t have a stranglehold on their lives. That’s an incredible number.

Here’s the full 2012 list, broken down by categories:

31.50% Nonreligious. Wow.

It makes you wonder how 40% of Americans can still believe in Creationism… because not all those people who are “very religious” go to churches preaching Young Earth Creationism.

I’m just gonna leave this headline right here:

The study conducted by the British Parliament showed there were 41 million Christians in Britain, down nearly 8 percent since 2004. Meanwhile, the number of nonbelievers stood at 13.4 million, up 49 percent over the same period.

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“If these populations continue to shrink and grow by the same number of people each year,” the study said, “the number of people with no religion will overtake the number of Christians in Great Britain in 20 years.”

Actually, if the numbers released last month by the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science are accurate, Christians will fade away even faster due to the fact that many people who currently call themselves Christians don’t even really believe in most of the theology.