Online Poll Results: Are You Religious?

I am not sure how much it would affect the results, but the quiz leaves out church-going religious people who are not fundamentalist or evangelical, e.g., Catholics, mainline Protestants, Orthodox Christians, non-Christians.

I think that poll was kind of ambiguous. Many agnostics would consider themselves spiritual (they meditate or something), other people will probably object the "when I was a kid" choice, I thought evangelicals were fundamentalists, etc. I'm thinking there are more atheists and agnostics than the poll shows.

Wow the poll is so far down, I never saw it. I'd be in the majority though.

Yeah, I don't usually scroll down that far either, but I'd be in the majority too.
I maintain, though, that anyone who answers "agnostic" when asked about his religious beliefs didn't understand the question.

Doesn't evangelical only refer to protestants? also what about jews, muslims, hindus, etc.? surely they wouldn't be considered evangelical by any definition but still religious.

Does the Church of the FSM have a fundamentalist branch?

Small point: what would a church-attending Catholic or Anglican answer?

Bob

...I maintain, though, that anyone who answers "agnostic" when asked about his religious beliefs didn't understand the question. Posted by: Cairnarvon

Maintain what ever delusions you wish within your belief set. I'll maintain that you don't understand what being an Agnostic means.

No, I've no intention of telling you, you've obviouslly taken your position of faith on this and built it into your belief set.
I will point out that someone could be an Agnostic Theist or an Agnostic Platonist or an Agnostic Buddhist or even, heaven forfend, an Agnostic Atheist (Dawkins seems to maintain that he is an Agnostic Atheist). It isn't, necessarily, a mid-point between Theism and Atheism.

I do find it vaguely humorous (sad as well) when Atheists try telling Agnostics why they are really Atheists and that Agnostics don't understand their own position.

Doesn't evangelical only refer to protestants? also what about jews, muslims, hindus, etc.? surely they wouldn't be considered evangelical by any definition but still religious. Posted by: chris

The definition of evangelical seems to have morphed, it shouldn't only refer to Protestant christian churches (those sects that splintered off the Catholic church, rather than those that splintered off the Orthodox churches). I say this because early Christians (prior to any formal splintering) saw evangelising as preaching the good news and that some are called to do so and others are called to other tasks. I wonder when the US Protestant christian evangelicals managed to steal the word?

I would agree that in its more open meaning, to preach/disseminate a point of view vigorously, it can be applied to non-christian groups or adherents of those groups.

I would even say that it should not be limited to religious groups; political adherents often show the same type of blind faith and zeal as do some of those following non-religious philosophies.

I missed the poll too. I'll be scrolling down there more often now!

I'd say you didn't cover all the bases - the "no way, I'm atheist" could easily encompass the "I was when I was a kid, but no longer" group. And there's no slot for those who attend church regularly and believe faithfully but don't consider themselves fundamentalist or evangelical, just good old mainstream whatever...

But I'd be the "used to be but no longer" category, if you're interested.

writing online polls isn't as easy as it first looks! i am actually going to refer to your comments on this poll and use them to rewrite the "are you religious?" poll so it is more inclusive and informative.

my "dream poll" is to write one of those diagnostic polls that you see on "webthings". my poll would ask you a bunch of questions about your personality traits and then diagnose which north american bird species you are (this is especially informative since i often picture people as birds after i get to know them). but that is a fairly involved poll, and i am still a beginner.

Maintain what ever delusions you wish within your belief set. I'll maintain that you don't understand what being an Agnostic means.

No, I've no intention of telling you, you've obviouslly taken your position of faith on this and built it into your belief set.

Don't be a cockpouch.

I will point out that someone could be an Agnostic Theist or an Agnostic Platonist or an Agnostic Buddhist or even, heaven forfend, an Agnostic Atheist (Dawkins seems to maintain that he is an Agnostic Atheist). It isn't, necessarily, a mid-point between Theism and Atheism.

That's what I was saying, yes. I was also saying that "agnostic" isn't an answer to a question about religious beliefs. At best, it's a meta-belief.
I'm an agnostic atheist, like almost every single other atheist ever. When asked about my religious beliefs, though, I don't answer "agnostic", I answer "atheist", because that's what the question is about.

I do find it vaguely humorous (sad as well) when Atheists try telling Agnostics why they are really Atheists and that Agnostics don't understand their own position.

Blah, blah, blah.
I'm not saying they don't understand their position. I'm saying they don't understand the question.

Never saw the poll. I was raised Catholic and tried to "make it work" for many years. Now I'm part of the majority in your poll.

Never saw the poll. I now note that your current poll is well below the comment box, and therefor, much farther down than I have any reason to scroll. As others have noted, the questions are not mutually exclusive, and leave out large rafts of people. The fact that naive online poll interfaces force mutually exclusive answers makes such polls trivial to write badly, but deceptively difficult to write well; a series of mutually exclusive questions is not a natural feature of human conversation. Second, the poll author inevitably puts their biases into the answers, but answerer has no comparable ability; if they pick a radio button, they appear to conform to the poll author's biases. I could go on all day ... . There are also technological vulnerabilities; it only takes a few days to research and experimentation to learn how to write a poll-banging script that can stuff the majority of online polls with any number of votes. Here too, I could go on all day.

Don't be a cockpouch.

I'll try really really hard not be just to keep you happy.

Blah, blah, blah.
I'm not saying they don't understand their position. I'm saying they don't understand the question. Posted by: Cairnarvon

Blah, de blah, de blah blah.
No, the question is understood your understanding is lacking.

Theist vs. Atheist is a binary condition, not trinary. There is literally no middle ground. One can be unsure about one's theism, as in not having completely made up one's mind, but Agnostic is not a logically valid response to a question about theistic belief.

Gnostic vs. Agnostic is a separate binary condition which reports on the ability to 'know' or 'not know' something (or anything). Combining them allows 4 possible states, 00, 01, 10 and 11.

Most atheists will agree that they cannot prove that no kind of god exists. They will also likely admit that they can imagine a situation where a god could provide sufficient proof of its existence and that they would then believe. Thus Cairnarvon is correct that most atheists are also agnostic.

Most who claim to be agnostic on the question of god(s) live their lives as if there were no gods. They don't pray, make offerings or proselytise others to convert, etc. This is the rationale for those patronising Atheists to relabel self professed Agnostics. When some Agnostics deny that they are Atheists, they may simply be seeking a label with less baggage.

Otherwise they can only be agnostic Theists. Even though something called Gnosticism was declared a heresy by the early Church, it's my impression that in the context I am considering, most church goers would be gnostic theists, as they would seem to believe that one can know that there is a god.

Unfortunately, just as theists have all their thousands of different sects based on various opinions, non-theists have their nuances as well, such as implicit vs. explicit or hard vs. soft, etc.

On the other hand, as far as I know, non-theists haven't started any wars or burned anybody over such philosophical differences.

JohnnieCanuck: I did say that I wouldn't comment back, however your comment is interesting and does show some of the conceptual problems caused by the way words change meaning over time, so I comment below on why Agnosticism is a perfectly valid answer to the God no-God question.

Caernavon is only correct in as much as he takes Agnostic to simply mean doubt or perhaps passive disbelief. Your reasoning also seems to make this assumption.

Most who claim to be agnostic on the question of god(s) live their lives as if there were no gods. They don't pray, make offerings or proselytise others to convert, etc. This is the rationale for those patronising Atheists to relabel self professed Agnostics. When some Agnostics deny that they are Atheists, they may simply be seeking a label with less baggage.

By what "rational" does anyone seek to declare what someone elses beliefs mean, especially when they don't know what those beliefs are? I think patronising is a polite way to describe them, arrogant in their ignorance is closer.

As for baggage; as Agnostics are condescended to and their beliefs pooh-poohd as either cowardice or ignorance by both Atheists and Theists I'll take that slight with a grain of salt.

Gnosticism existed before Christianity.
People often take Agnostic to be the antonym of Gnostic, this is apparently true as it literally means no-Gnosis however Huxley didn't coin the word for that reason.

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Agnosticism:

http://aleph0.clarku.edu/huxley/CE5/Agn.html
It is interesting that your comment is the same as that given by Atheists (I note that at the end you used the different term non-Theist, which isn't strictly speaking the same animal) and Theists vis-à-vis Agnostics.

To both Atheists & Theists Agnostics are ignorant infidels who haven't seen the light of their most true, obvious and "rational" philosophies various and arcane.

You say that Agnostic cannot apply to Theism, an absolute statement which is simply untrue.
It is true that either a God exists or doesn't; however it isn't required for me to take sides and declare for one or t'other. I'm free to wallow in knowledgeable ignorance.

To give an example from normal human experience.
A police detective shows you a picture and asks you if it is the person you saw leaving a specific building a couple of days ago. Now the picture is either of the person you saw or it is not (i.e. it is true or false), but you have more than two choices that you can make; can't tell and don't know are both valid answers and are equally valid as answers to the existence or otherwise of a deity.

Agnostic can mean to doubt; one can be Agnostic about most anything or part of anything in that regard. Some, Atheists & Theists seem to think that the claim to Agnosticism is either passive disbelief or fear of ostracism.

However, Agnostic can also mean to not have enough knowledge.
http://www.victorianweb.org/religion/agnos.html
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/mathew/sn-huxley.html

As Huxley declared for Agnosticism "it is the fundamental axiom of modern science"

"Those who attack agnosticism tended to ignore the careful distinctions which Huxley made, they lump agnostics in with atheists, materialists, and other "infidels." Taken in addition to the very traditional and conservative morals of the first Agnostics, who were careful to comport themselves like model middle-class Victorians, the distinctions are important to an explanation of the movement's influence. Where the atheist says that God does not exist, the agnostic says that reason can never be used to prove the existence of a being who transcends reason, and whether or not He exists...."

I'll leave the comment with this link, a person describing his move from Theism to Atheism and then to Agnosticism http://www.philosophersnet.com/magazine/article.php?id=1027

...On the other hand, as far as I know, non-theists haven't started any wars or burned anybody over such philosophical differences. Posted by: JohnnieCanuck

I like your throw away comment at the end that non-theists don't fight wars to impose their beliefs; try telling that to the Tibetans.
You even get non-theists fighting each other about the best set of disbeliefs or how to apply them or who decides what is reactionary (Vietnam v Cambodia and USSR v China each had peaceful discussions between devoutly non-Theist regimes that involved shooting each other).
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/january/8/newsid_25060…
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract;jsessionid=7382882…

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Only 7 plus a bit more days

Far be it from me to interrupt you in your beating of that straw man you've constructed, but one particular thing needs addressing.

I like your throw away comment at the end that non-theists don't fight wars to impose their beliefs; try telling that to the Tibetans.

You somehow read "non-theists don't wage wars or burn anyone over the philosophical differences of non-theism" to mean "non-theists never wage war"? I thought you said you were going to try not to be a cockpouch?

You're conflating political beliefs with religious beliefs. Communism and whatever crimes have been committed in its name are completely irrelevant to atheism for one very important reason: none of it was motivated by the atheistic component of it.
No war has ever been waged over the specifics of atheism. Wars have been waged over communism, which happens to have an atheistic component, but they were waged over the political ideology, not the religious one. China didn't invade Tibet because Tibetans were religious. Vietnam didn't occupy Cambodia because they were not-believing in God in the wrong way.

If you can't understand that, I don't think we anyone can help you.

...You somehow read "non-theists don't wage wars or burn anyone over the philosophical differences of non-theism" to mean "non-theists never wage war"? I thought you said you were going to try not to be a cockpouch?

The difference between the USSR and China may have been purely political. The Vietnamese went into Cambodia specifically to stop the slaughter that the Khmer Rouge where commiting in pursuit of their non-theist utopian dream. Something for which Vietnam should get a lot of plaudits and they did it in the name of their non-theist ideals.

The Chinese deliberately set out to destroy Buddhism in Tibet, at least its political & cultural influence; this Mao commanded to spread the revolution and impose a non-theistic (more acurately, no organised religions allowed) rule, one in which theists/religious are barred from senior goverment office. You may not know but the Dalai Lama doesn't live in Tibet anymore.

You're conflating political beliefs with religious beliefs. Communism and whatever crimes have been committed in its name are completely irrelevant to atheism for one very important reason: none of it was motivated by the atheistic component of it.

I do not see why you think I'm mixing politics and religion?

One of the cornerstones of communism is its atheism (non-theism). I'm not saying that atheism = communism, that is obviously not so; simply pointing out that one can infer that a communist is an atheist.

So if communism has as part of its foundational ideology atheism, which it does, claiming that all bad things done by communism have nothing to do with atheism is some what of a stretch. Liberating the people from the oppression of religion was/is one of its aims after all and it wasn't written that it had to be done by peaceful means alone.

No war has ever been waged over the specifics of atheism. Wars have been waged over communism, which happens to have an atheistic component, but they were waged over the political ideology, not the religious one. China didn't invade Tibet because Tibetans were religious. Vietnam didn't occupy Cambodia because they were not-believing in God in the wrong way.

Vietnam invaded Cambodia to stop the Khmer Rouge commiting atrocities (both then under the rule of communist inspired atheistic leaders). The Vietnamese found the actions of the Khmer Rouge wrong and fought to remove them. It was a war between different atheistic philosophies.
I never said that it was about belief in God, you added that; though, as it happens, the Khmer Rouge did start their reign of terror by targetting Buddhist monks/nuns.

You are free to call it political ideology, however a political ideology is based on a philosophy; in these cases the underlying philosophies are communist and so include atheism amongst their axioms.

I am definetely not implying that all atheists are bad/evil (that would be just as silly as saying all religious people are bad/evil), just that atheists like everyone else are capable of doing evil in pursuit of what they see as the greater good.

If you can't understand that, I don't think we anyone can help you. Posted by: Cairnarvon

I can actually read what you write, but until you make more sense it isn't really helpful.

You raised the initial straw man, don't try and cast its creation onto me.

I don't recollect requesting your help.