A new poll cited at the Florida Ledger finds that 82% of Americans say they believe in an afterlife.
A recent survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life showed that about 16 percent of American adults have
no particular religious belief, including about 4 percent who identify themselves as atheists or agnostics. A 2007 Pew survey showed20 percent of adults ages 18 to 25 have no religious affiliation, almost double the percentage in 1986.
The number of 82% early in the article is not cited to a specific source. Assuming 18% of Americans do not believe in an afterlife, that flies in the face of the other statistics in the study because guess what? If you don’t believe in the afterlife, you don’t believe in religion. (The one exception here would be perhaps if you see Buddhism as a religion, in which case there is still an aspect of samsara or return to the world).
I was interesting in the number of 18%. It seems to make the non-religious community seem larger. It’s probably a more accurate number of non-religious people in this country. Whenever polled, the number of atheists will always remain low, like the 4% from the Pew Forum study because people don’t like to be labeled as atheists. They will say they’re not sure they believe in god, but if you call them agnostic, it bothers them. They may say they certainly don’t believe in god, but they won’t label themselves as an atheist because of its negative connotation. But regardless. If the 82% number is accurate, that means that almost a fifth of this nation doesn’t believe in the concepts of heaven and hell! That’s an incredible number.
18% of Americans
and get this one.
It’s a lot of people. Imagine if the combined population of Iraq and Afghanistan did not believe in an afterlife. I think that would significantly change things for the better. There are possibly that many people HERE in the U.S. who don’t believe in an afterlife.
May 19, 2008 at 1:58 am |
I’m interested in many beliefs, including atheism, but I wonder why annihilation seems to you like something to get very exited about? It scares the hell out of me, even though I realize that it might happen.
May 19, 2008 at 7:47 am |
Karsten -
Thanks for visiting. Interesting comment. I’m not sure I know what you’re referencing, however. What do you mean by annihilation? And how do I get very excited about it? If you take annihilation to mean the Christian “Hell,” then you’re wrong because I do not believe in Hell. The idea that others live their lives fearing this vision of being made to burn and do the chores of an evil demon does peak my interest.
I’m pleased that you’re interested in many beliefs. I’d like to remind you though – atheism is not a belief but rather a lack of belief. That’s really all there is to describe atheism. It’s the lack of belief in a supernatural deity.
January 6, 2009 at 2:37 pm |
Sigh. If atheism is a belief then abstinence is a form of sex.
February 28, 2009 at 7:55 pm |
That’s not a valid argument. Although I’ve heard it repeated thousands of times.
Sex is not a belief system. Atheism is a belief system in that it relies on belief in materialism – or a belief that everything formed by chance. Atheism is not a lack of belief. Please spare to pass that over less intelligent people.
March 21, 2009 at 10:10 pm |
I just can’t get my head around a few things. First is the apparent existence of consciousness and free will. I mean, if I say a funny joke, or choose to do right versus wrong, or if I fall in love…all these things are due to the happenstance of how my brain got wired, and the synapses working their ion channels and neurotransmitters? In that regard, should all inelligence, whether computers or human, be considered artificial intelligence? If I am a machine, albeit a complex one, how so I seem to think, and seem to choose, and seem to create? What’s the difference between me and a brain dead vegetable, if it’s all just somesort of reflexive mechanism.
I understand what we call gravity, matter, electromagnetism, evolution, biologic behaviors, and such, but no one can tell me WHY E=MC2, WHY F=MA, or anything like that. If there IS nothing, then there should BE nothing.
September 30, 2009 at 10:32 am |
hi me
November 5, 2009 at 1:48 pm |
[...] Economy, by McCleary and Barro in Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2006). In the USA it’s 95% vs. 82%. And check out the data for European countries in Religion Statistics (compare with the data I [...]