Do people actually understand what atheists believe?

I saw this image float by in my social media feed today:

This sort of ignorant rant isn’t the main reason I’m fairly restrained about publicly proclaiming my atheism, but it does show that some folks really don’t have a clue what it means to be an atheist. Statements like “atheists are the reason crime is rampant” show ignorance both about atheism and crime statistics (crime has been going down in the US for the past couple decades).

But seeing this rant made me wonder if the author genuinely understood the definition of “atheist” or if she simply thought she knew that “atheists,” whatever they were, were “bad” people. And if she doesn’t understand what atheists really are, maybe part of the problem with negative perception of atheists in America is due to a similar misconception in the general public. Fortunately, there has been a little bit of research on this topic, most notably a 2012 study published in the peer-reviewed journal Secularism and Nonreligion.

Lawton Swan and Martin Heesacker  asked 618 Americans their subjective opinions about a fictitious person, “Jordan,” who was either identified as an atheist, with no belief in God, religious, or unmarried. The “unmarried” condition was used as a control. The respondents were then asked to rate Jordan on a scale of 1 to 7 across several dimensions of personality, like bad / good, or foolish / wise.

This entire group was divided into two groups, one of which was given a brief biography of Jordan to go along with his identifying information. After controlling for demographics, the results were as follows:

I’ve included rough confidence intervals (about 95%). These intervals can overlap by a bit and still represent significant differences, but as you can see, whether or not Jordan was given a bio, the respondents rated “Atheist” and no belief in God profiles significantly lower. When no personalization was made, it appears that “Atheist” was rated lowest of all, but the researchers say that the difference between Atheist and no belief was not statistically significant. I’d say it’s a bit of a trend, but it’s interesting to see that the trend disappears when Jordan is presented with a biography.

Swan and Henner conclude that the American bias against atheists is not caused by the negative connotation of the word “atheist.” In fact, people appear to be biased specifically against non-belief. To confirm this, in the final question of the study, the researchers asked respondents to define “atheist”. Eighty-five percent of respondents gave a response such as “a person who doesn’t believe in God.” No one who saw the word “atheist” in Jordan’s profile and couldn’t define “atheist” was included in the analysis of the results, and still we see no significant difference in the rating of atheists and non-believers.

This isn’t to say that a few rants such as the one I reprint above might not still result from ignorance about the nature of atheism, but in general, it seems, the bias in America against people who don’t believe in God is related directly to their non-belief. It would be interesting to see this study redone with a bit more power — perhaps it’s true that, say, evangelical christians do make some kind of distinction between “atheist” and “non-believer.”

Swan L.K. & Heesacker M. (2012). Anti-atheist bias in the United States: Testing two critical assumptions, Secularism and Nonreligion, 1 32-42.

A place to discuss issues of belief / skepticism in the South

I’ve lived in the South for 19 years now, longer than I’ve lived in any other part of the country. Like it or not, I’m a part of this region, even though many aspects of it still seem foreign to me. The most foreign aspect is, to put it bluntly, the in-your-face religion espoused by most people around here.

I still have trouble comprehending why people expect others to pray for them when their pets die or their kids get in trouble at school. But I do realize that it’s something I’m going to have to live with — probably at least until I retire. This blog is going to be a place where I can discuss these issues frankly, and, hopefully, without my [religious] friends figuring out that I am doing it.

It’s not that I keep my atheism a secret — I don’t — it’s more that, given how much I dislike the in-your-faceness of religion around here, I want to see if I can discuss these issues in a different way. For now, I think that means it’s best to keep my extended discussions about religion and atheism anonymous (or technically, pseudonymous, as I’ve adopted the pseudonym “Carolina Atheist”).

So…here goes. I’m looking forward to seeing where this discussion leads!