In the week following the 2011 UK Census, the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science decided to commission their own poll (with their own questions) to find out just how religious people in Britain were.

It turns out a lot less than even they imagined:

More than 2,000 people were polled for Dawkins’ centre by respected pollster Ipsos Mori during census week last April.

Just 54 per cent identified themselves as Christians, compared to 72 per cent in 2001.

Almost three-quarters of those who described themselves as Christian did so because they were born into a faith, rather than because of their beliefs. Just a third (32 per cent) of these believe Jesus was physically resurrected. One in five do not believe in the resurrection, even in a spiritual sense.

Just under half, 49 per cent, do not think of Jesus as the son of God, while one in 25 of those who declare themselves Christian do not believe he existed at all.

Wow.

It lends support to the notion that, if that many Brits aren’t even truly religious, then politicians need to stop pushing religiously-based legislation.

You can see the press releases from the RDFRS here and here. The raw data (including questions asked) is here (PDF).

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Incidentally, as Richard Dawkins was promoting this study in the media yesterday, many headlines seemed to focus on his “inability” to recall the subtitle of Charles Darwin’s book.

The transcript went like this:

Rev Giles Fraser: Richard, if I said to you what is the full title of ‘The Origin Of Species’, I’m sure you could tell me that.

Richard Dawkins: Yes I could

Fraser: Go on then.

Dawkins: On The Origin Of Species.. Uh. With, Oh God. On The Origin Of Species. There is a sub title with respect to the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life.

Fraser: You’re the high pope of Darwinism… If you asked people who believed in evolution that question and you came back and said 2% got it right, it would be terribly easy for me to go ‘they don’t believe it after all.’ It’s just not fair to ask people these questions. They self-identify as Christians and I think you should respect that.

You can hear the audio here.

Because, you know, if he can’t remember the subtitle of “On the Origin of Species,” God must exist. He recalled it within a couple of seconds, of course, but even if he didn’t, what would that have proven? Absolutely nothing.

This is a guest post by Juhem Navarro-Rivera. Juhem is a political scientist and Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society & Culture (ISSSC) and blogs about Latinos, Politics and Secularism at The LatiNone

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Latinos are considered to be a very religious and socially conservative group. While the assumption is that most Latinos are Catholic, every once in a while there are reports of waves of Latino immigrants abandoning their traditional Catholicism as they get used to life in the U.S. The bulk of the attention is given to other Christian churches, particularly Pentecostal churches, which are considered to be receiving the lion’s share of former Catholic Latinos.

These assumptions about Latinos don’t hold up to scrutiny.

Last year, the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture, which produces the oft-cited American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS), explored the changes in the religious identification of Latinos. The report, which I co-authored with my ISSSC colleagues Barry A. Kosmin and Ariela Keysar, shows that in just one generation (between 1990 and 2008) the percentage of Nones (people with no religious identification) among Latinos doubled from 6% to 12%. These proportions are comparable to ARIS findings in the general U.S. population, which went from 8% in 1990 to 15% in 2008.

This growing secularity among Latinos was the subject of my talk on December 4 at the Harvard Humanist Chaplaincy. My goal, then and now, is to explain how deep secularism runs in the Latino community and the important role of Latinos in the growth of American secularism over the last two decades.

These are several ways in which Latinos have contributed to the growing secularism in the U.S. “No religion” is the fastest-growing category in the Latino community since 1990, accounting for about a fifth of Latinos. Latino Nones are as likely as American Nones to identify as atheist or agnostic (11%) and 16% of atheists and agnostics in the U.S. are Latinos. Similarly to the American None population in general, Latino Nones are very young — over 40% are under the age of 30 — and well educated, with about a quarter reportedly having earned a college degree or higher.

The youth of Latino Nones suggests that secularism will increase among Latinos. Since Latinos are expected to become even a larger share of the U.S. population in the future, the future of American secularism is intrinsically linked to the increased secularity among Latinos.

The increasing secularism among Latinos also manifests itself in politics. For years, there’s been an expectation that the supposedly growing religious conservatism among Latinos will drive most of us to the Republican Party (most Latinos support Democratic candidates, including Barack Obama, who received 67% of the Latino vote in 2008). President Reagan used to say that Latinos were Republicans, they just didn’t know it. When President Bush received about 44% of the Latino vote in his reelection bid in 2004 many suggested that the Latino GOP wave was about to materialize.

As of 2011 the huge wave of religious Latino GOP voters has not materialized. The stereotype remains, though. The importance of religion for Latinos at the polls was the subject of a new survey by the Latino Decisions group. The study, released on December 8^th, found that for a majority of Latinos — 55% to be precise — religion doesn’t play a major factor when voting for a particular candidate.

While this may come as a surprise to many in American politics, it is not a surprise to those who have witnessed and documented the increasing secularity among Latinos. As we approach the 2012 elections politicians must learn that to capture the future Latino vote, they’ll need to work harder than just inviting a couple of preachers. Most Latinos don’t vote as “guided” by their religion and many more are leaving religion altogether. It is time to stop writing about Latinos and religion in an way that reinforces old cliches and stereotypes and understand that our reality is more complicated.

We know people don’t like atheists.

Researchers at the University of Minnesota told us in 2006 (PDF) that “atheists are less likely to be accepted, publicly and privately, than any others from a long list of ethnic, religious, and other minority groups.”

But why is that the case?

University of British Columbia psychologist Will Gervais along with his colleague Ara Norenzayan and Azim F. Shariff (U of Oregon) think they have the answer: “anti-atheist prejudice is particularly motivated by distrust.”

Well…. duh.

They make their case in the November 7^th edition of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Religious individuals may use the religious beliefs of others as just such cues: Religiosity may be viewed as a proxy for trustwor- thiness, particularly by religious believers… Indeed, people may even preferentially trust members of other faiths, to the extent that the other individuals are seen as fearful of their own deities’ displeasure. Sosis… argued that religious signals of trustworthiness can be coopted by members of other religious groups and notes, for example, that Mormons are viewed as particularly trustworthy nannies by non-Mormon New Yorkers… and Sikhs are viewed by non-Sikhs as trustworthy economic partners… In at least some situations, observers use commitment to even rival gods as signals of trustworthiness.

Matters are different for atheists, however. If belief in moralizing gods is used as a signal of trustworthiness, it follows that those who explicitly deny the existence of gods are not merely expressing private disbelief; they are also sending the wrong signal.

How do you test something like this? The researchers use a variety of methods and a few of the highlights are below.

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There’s a classic study in which subjects are told about Linda, “an outspoken and politically active single woman.” Knowing that — and nothing else — about her, is it more likely that Linda is (a) a banker or (b) a banker and a feminist?

It’s mathematically guaranteed that (a) is more likely than (b). And yet, most participants choose (b). It just feels more correct. That’s called the “conjunction fallacy.”

Knowing that people will commit that fallacy, the researchers used it to their advantage to test their hypothesis about distrust.

They had over 100 participants read the following passage:

Richard is 31 years old. On his way to work one day, he accidentally backed his car into a parked van. Because pedestrians were watching, he got out of his car. He pretended to write down his insurance information. He then tucked the blank note into the van’s window before getting back into his car and driving away.

Later the same day, Richard found a wallet on the sidewalk. Nobody was looking, so he took all of the money out of the wallet. He then threw the wallet in a trash can.

Damn… Richard’s a dick.

Anyway, about a quarter of the subjects were then asked what was more likely: That Richard was (a) a teacher or (b) a teacher and a Christian?

Other subjects were given the options of Richard being (a) a teacher or (b) a teacher and a Muslim?

Others had to decide if Richard was (a) a teacher or (b) a teacher and a rapist?

Finally, the last group had to decide if Richard was (a) a teacher or (b) a teacher and an atheist?

How did that play out?

Not very well for us.

In sum, participants frequently committed the conjunction fallacy when given a description of an untrustworthy person and a target who could be an atheist or a rapist but not for targets who could be a Christian or a Muslim…

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… this implies that a description of an untrustworthy person is not viewed as representative of religious individuals, be they Christian or Muslim. On the other hand, this description — of an individual who commits insurance fraud and steals money when the chances of detection are minimal — was only seen as representative of atheists and rapists, and people did not significantly differentiate atheists from rapists.

Somehow, we’re less trusted than even rapists. That’s disheartening, but it really says more about how religious people think than anything about atheists.

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The researchers then ran a similar experiment, this time replacing “Richard” with “Sarah.” They asked participants whether Sarah was more likely to be (a) a teacher or (b) a teacher and a XXXX (where XXXX was a Jewish person, a feminist, or an atheist).

We didn’t fare any better given the new options.

Consistent with our theoretical framework, untrustworthiness was viewed as more representative of atheists than of either feminists or Jewish people…

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Despite the relative frequency of atheist participants in our samples, atheist targets were still the least trusted in [this study].

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In another study, participants were given nearly-identical descriptions of an atheist and a religious person. They were then asked “which of the two candidates they would hire as either a daycare worker or a waitress.” The daycare worker was considered a “High Trust” job while the waitress was seen as a “Low Trust” job.

Turns out people would rather leave their children with the religious person:

It’s like they know about our diets…

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So what did the researchers conclude from all this?

Atheists are among the least liked groups of people in many parts of the world, and the present studies help to explain why. The present six studies converged on the conclusion that distrust is at the core of this particularly powerful, peculiar, and prevalent form of prejudice.

Let’s say all of this is accurate. How do we counteract the negative perceptions about us?

Two ways.

First, we have to continue doing community service — serving at food banks, donating to charity, giving blood, etc. Show people that we can be good without god.

Second, we have to let people we trust know that we’re atheists. People think poorly of atheists because they don’t think they know any. It’s a shock to their system when they find out someone close to them doesn’t believe in a god… so shock them! Let them know that someone they already trust is an atheist.

Those two things would do more to reverse the results the researchers found in these studies than anything else I can think of.

(Thanks to Richard for the link!)

The National Catholic Reporter has put out their fifth survey cataloguing Catholic attitudes and practices in America.

We should be throwing a party to celebrate these results.

When asked what aspects of Catholicism are important to them, most Catholics fall in line with typical Christian teachings, but they take a Honey Badger approach to what the Vatican tells them. In fact, only 30% of Catholics say “Vatican authority” is important to them. What about priestly celibacy? Not a big deal — only 21% think it’s relevant. Even opposition to gay marriage and opposition to abortion scored 35% and 40% in terms of “importance,” respectively.

Although the Vatican and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops have been highly involved over several decades in articulating the church’s opposition to abortion, fewer than half of American Catholics, 40 percent, say that the church’s teachings opposing abortion are very important to them personally. And even fewer say that the church’s opposition to same-sex marriage (35 percent) and the death penalty (29 percent) are very important. Similarly, Catholics also see the current structure of the church, despite its centuries-old tradition, as relatively unimportant to their identity as Catholics.

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To corroborate that, Highly Committed Catholics (“those who said that the church was the most important or among the most important parts of their life, [and] who attended church once a week or more often”) were asked whether one could be a “good Catholic” even if you didn’t follow Church teachings on certain issues…

For example, can you be a good Catholic even if you use birth control? The Pope says no. But 60% of the serious Catholics say yes! (That’s a slight drop from 2005, but it’s still a *huge* percentage.)

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Here’s an important one: When you have questions about sex, homosexuality, contraception, abortion, or divorce, who has the final say in what’s right and wrong?

Fewer than 20% of Catholics look solely to the church for moral guidance in these matters! In most cases, more than half of all Catholics just figure it out on their own. (And sometimes, they trust both themselves and the Church Leadership.) But isn’t that great? The Church isn’t seen as the arbiter in all things right and wrong! They’re just one voice out there — and one that’s losing ground. They’ve made so many blunders in the past that even their own sheep won’t look to them when grappling with major social issues.

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What about the Eucharist? Do Catholics understand that they’re supposed to believe the bread and wine actually become the body and blood of Christ?

50% of Catholics don’t even know that. They think it’s only symbolic. In other words, half the Catholics in America don’t know one of the most important beliefs about their own faith.

But maybe it’s not surprising that religious people don’t understand their own religions. In fact, if they did, most would probably laugh it off. (“There’s no way my faith is that crazy.”)

So they asked Catholics a question, “Do you believe that at the consecration during a Catholic Mass, the bread and wine really become the body and blood of Jesus Christ?” Forget the Church’s teachings. Do you believe that happens?

37% of Catholics said no!

Unbelievable.

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So what does all this data tell us?

We’re living in a world full of Cultural Catholics — Cafeteria Catholics — who pick and choose what parts of the faith they can accept and which are expendable. They don’t buy into the Church’s outright lies, but they might appreciate a lot of the spiritual guidance. They have that “special feeling” when they walk into a church, even if they don’t believe everything the priest tells them. They like the community, but not the bullshit. They know Church thinking is stuck in the past but they’re moving forward with the times despite clinging to the Catholic title — even if there’s a contradiction there.

It also means those of us who criticize the Church, point out the obvious lies, mock the silly beliefs, castigate the Church for its moral failings, and make the case for secular alternatives to the supposed “benefits” of religion are doing a wonderful job.

We still have a long way to go but it’s wearing off on a lot of Catholics.

Eventually, maybe they’ll muster up the courage to shed the label entirely.

The Public Religion Research Institute just released the 2011 American Values Survey — “a large annual survey exploring important issues at the intersection of religion, values and politics.”

The headlines are focusing on how only 42% of Americans know Mitt Romney is a Mormon and how most Americans want to see a redistribution of wealth, but I’m most interested in the questions that involve people without faith…

Only one piece of information stands out and it’s in response to the following question: Would you be very comfortable, somewhat comfortable, somewhat uncomfortable, or very uncomfortable with [an atheist] serving as president?

Check out the left side of this chart for the response:

67% of all voters would feel somewhat or very uncomfortable with an atheist president.

80% of all Republicans, 70% of Democrats, and 56% of all Independents feel the same.

So Democrats would be more uncomfortable with an atheist president than a Muslim president.

Republicans — not surprisingly, a higher proportion of them than Democrats — would be equally uncomfortable with both an atheist president and a Muslim president.

Overall, though, a non-theistic presidential candidate has a bigger hurdle to overcome than a person of any faith at all. It’s unbelievable that in this day and age, America still has this much of a hangup over a leader who would put more weight in evidence and logical thinking than in an imaginary god and ancient books.

(And how the hell are people more comfortable with Mormons than with us?! Their story is even crazier than that of evangelical Christianity!)

When the numbers were broken down fully (PDF), only 31% of those surveyed were very comfortable or somewhat comfortable with an atheist president (compared to 33% for a Muslim president).

While our numbers seem to be growing in every other conceivable way, we’re not making a lot of progress when it comes to how religious Americans perceive us. They still fear those of us who don’t believe in a god.

The best way to fix that, of course, is for more of us to come out publicly as atheists. When people know that someone close to them doesn’t believe in god — and is still a good friend, an honest person, a decent human being — it makes it that much harder to think badly of atheists right off the bat.