It looks like aethism’s bad reputation just got worse.
Atheists must not only live with the stigma of being non-believers in one of the most churched nations in the world, now they have to deal with the stigma of being superstitious.
A recent Gallup poll shows atheists are more superstitious than people who attend religious services — which has led some to question the legitimacy of many atheists’ “non-believer” stance. Further inspection of the poll leads to some different conclusions.
In a post published Sept. 19 Wall Street Journal online contributor Mollie Ziegler Hemingway questioned the beliefs of today’s atheist. She thinks they are irrational.
Hemingway argued the “new atheist movement” has chosen to attack believers by claiming their religious beliefs are nonsense. Furthermore, the beliefs — or lack thereof — of atheists are illogical because atheists are more likely to believe in the paranormal or pseudo-science.
She drives her point home even further by saying “... the New Atheist campaign, by discouraging religion, won’t create a new group of intelligent, skeptical, enlightened beings.
Far from it: It might actually encourage new levels of mass superstition...”
In making these claims, not only does Hemingway mischaracterize a decent amount of the U.S. population, but she also insults the intelligence and beliefs of her own readers.
The basis for Hemingway’s claim is a Baylor-funded Gallup poll published in late September.
The poll, entitled “What Americans Really Believe,” is a survey designed to gauge American attitudes on various paranormal and religious beliefs.
Hemingway is correct about the results of the poll. It found 31 percent of people who never worship expressed strong belief in paranormal or pseudo-scientific phenomena, while only 8 percent of people who attend a house of worship more than once a week expressed the same beliefs.
The questions used in the survey run the range of possible topics.
Some of the questions used were “Do dreams foretell the future? Did ancient advanced civilizations such as Atlantis exist? Can places be haunted? Is it possible to communicate with the dead? Will creatures like Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster someday be discovered by science?”
The study was performed by Rodney Stark, a well-vetted and respected sociologist specializing in religion. The empirical analysis is not problematic and the results of Stark’s work are clear.
The problem is Hemingway’s incorrect depiction of the belief structure of atheist. Her comparison of “superstition” and religion are insulting to both believers and non-believers alike.
From a sociological perspective religion and superstition may not look all that different.
Both involve rituals repeated for a desired feeling or effect, and both involve separating aspects of life into sacred and mundane. But religion and superstition are not the same.
In her haste to demean and belittle the beliefs of atheists Hemingway forgets the most important part of most religious experiences — the idea of a collective experience.
What makes religion such a fascinating slice of human life is the idea that millions of people around the world believe in and define their worldview by the same set of rules, obligations and a belief in something greater than humans. Without the collective aspects, religion is the same as superstition.
In her critique of atheism, Hemingway uses social scientific data — which may be pseudo-science as she never fully defines the term — in ways that are unjustified and themselves irrational.
In Hemingway’s world atheists bash the religious and atheists are more likely to believe in bigfoot. Therefore, atheists are just as irrational as they claim the religious are.
In making that thoughtless logical jump Hemingway disrespects the beliefs of atheists and also disrespects believers by dragging them down to this level of discourse.
I won’t deny the existence of evangelical atheists who bash the religious, but I won’t justify their beliefs, either. These people exist on both sides of the religious debate and are equally problematic.
It’s sad that closed minded evangelicals like Hemingway and her non-believer counterparts keep different groups from having reasonable and truly rational dialogue.
Charity is about more than putting money in the collection plate — it’s also about respecting the beliefs of those you oppose.
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Contact Skylar Gremillion at sgremillion@lsureveille.com
Superstition and religion aren't interchangeable terms
Published: Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Updated: Wednesday, October 8, 2008
6 comments
Tim.
I also read the article in the Post before this one. Not at all a good piece. Also, by reading the comments above I can see that all the people agree that this is a terrible non factual article. Just because somebody does not attend religious services this does not make them an Atheist. Skylar Gremillion has not done his homework and is living in the dark ages. Maybe he should study and investigate what the New Atheists are all about before he spouts off and becomes a laughing stock like Hemmingway. Your religion is dying folks. Not fast enough for me but sure as the sun rises and man decended from lesser life forms, Religion is dying. Check out the lifestyles and economy of the more secular nations like Sweden, Iceland, France and Denmark. Then, check out the idioticy of the likes of Sara Palin and what her and her Evangalists are trying to do to the States. Thank Darwin I live in Canada.
Your name
I hate this kind of unscientific reporting of data that implies causation from a simple poll. Just because 31% of non worshipers (or however they were distinguished) tend to have beliefs in paranormal or pseudo-scientific phenomena DOES NOT mean that their religious opinions CAUSED their superstitions. It is only a correlation! I assume that you would also find that this 31% of people watch more paranormal or pseudo-scientific subject television shows while worshipers watch more religious subject television shows....it is correlation not causation that is found by interviews and surveys!
D. Edward Farrar
The main problem I had with Ms. Hemingway's WSJ article when I read it was her basic assumption that being a strong adherent to one particular religion was not "superstitious" while substituting superstitions cribbed from elsewhere was. She did NOT conclude that "atheists" were superstitious, only that people who believed in god and went to church every Sunday were less likely to also believe in Tarot cards than those who didn't really have much faith in the religions they supposedly belonged to.This is not really all that surprising: if you actually believe everything in the bible, including its regular injunctions against believing anything else, it is rather unlikely that you are going to run off and consult an astrologer about a big decision. Anyone who does, clearly lacks complete faith in the god of the old testament. But lacking faith in the bible is not the same as being an atheist. Ms. Hemingway seemed somewhat dim about that distinction. Are Hindus atheists? They certainly lack faith in the judeo-christo-islamo deity most commonly worshiped in this country - but they are extremely religious in their own faith. Indeed, if a Hindu were to start occasionally attending a christian service he/she would be displaying just as much lack of faith in his religion as would anyone raised christian who decided to dabble in Hari Krishna or Transcendental Meditation.That 31 percent of those who do not attend church regularly do entertain themselves with other, non-christian superstitions does not mean that Ouija Boards and Séances are an atheist activity, it only means there is a broad middle ground between belief in the biblical god and lack of belief in any god. The assumption that holding fast to one set of superstitious beliefs, found in one particular religion, is somehow the standard of "rational" is simply wrong. Your neighbor who goes to church on Sunday and has her/his palm read on Monday morning before going into work has not become less "rational" - he/she is merely being inconsistent.
Chris
This article is plain silly - if people believe in the paranormal they are not, in any sense of the word, atheists.What they appear to be are people who are disenchanted with established (male-dominated, patriarchal, homophobic) religions.
Anonymous
Religion and science are not interchangeable terms due to nuance, but religion IS organized superstition. Superstition is an irrational belief arising from ignorance or fear. Is there a rational reason to believe in religion?
