Atheists who believe in God. . . people who don’t believe in God who don’t call themselves “atheist”: what’s up with that?
Atheism seems to have an image problem.
How many times have we heard laments that women who believe in equal rights don’t call themselves “feminists” — because they think of feminists as rabidly anti-male? (Never mind that these same lamenters then claim that you’re not a proper feminist unless you believe in abortion, free daycare, etc., so you just can’t win with them.)
Recently I’ve seen a couple tables that lead me to think that “atheist” is likewise being defined, in public opinion, as not just nonreligious, but anti-religious, so that plenty of people who meet the definition of “believing there is no God” reject the label “atheist.” (Certainly the “Atheist Channel” wouldn’t seem to have much reason for existence if its writers and audience weren’t interested in criticizing religion.)
Here’s a table from the recent Pew study, showing, among all who identified themselves as “nothing in particular,” the split in beliefs in God:
In other words, 20% of those who label themselves as “nothing in particular” — which comprise 15.8% of the population in total — are atheist, but reject that label.
And here’s the same table, for those who identify as “atheist”:
which means that, oddly enough, 8% of self-defined atheists (who comprise 3.1% of the population) are not actually atheist according to the standard definition, “know for sure there is no God.”
It’s also interesting that there have been some significant changes — in atheists who believe in God, and “nones” who don’t, since 2007, so let’s look at the overall table with changes in affiliation since then:
What does this all mean? I’m not sure I can take the changes from 2007 to 2014 and interpret them without creating meaning that isn’t there, due to margin-of-error issues, so I’ll just leave this as “interesting” and let you take it from there in the comments.
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