"My faith not the only way" - Americans

[TithonusSyndrome]

"In my country we seem to have gone from wishy-washy Anglicanism to wishy-washy agnosticism." - Douglas Adams

Religious Americans: My faith isn't the only way
Survey shows growing religious tolerance when it comes to different faiths

America remains a nation of believers, but a new survey finds most Americans don't feel their religion is the only way to eternal life — even if their faith tradition teaches otherwise.

The findings, released Monday in a survey of 35,000 adults, can either be taken as a positive sign of growing religious tolerance, or disturbing evidence that Americans dismiss or don't know fundamental teachings of their own faiths.

Among the more startling numbers in the survey, conducted last year by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life: 57 percent of evangelical church attendees said they believe many religions can lead to eternal life, in conflict with traditional evangelical teaching.
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In all, 70 percent of Americans with a religious affiliation shared that view, and 68 percent said there is more than one true way to interpret the teachings of their own religion.

"The survey shows religion in America is, indeed, 3,000 miles wide and only three inches deep," said D. Michael Lindsay, a Rice University sociologist of religion.

"There's a growing pluralistic impulse toward tolerance and that is having theological consequences," he said.

Earlier data from the Pew Forum's U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, released in February, highlighted how often Americans switch religious affiliation. The newly released material looks at religious belief and practice as well as the impact of religion on society, including how faith shapes political views.

The report argues that while relatively few people — 14 percent — cite religious beliefs as the main influence on their political thinking, religion still plays a powerful indirect role.

The study confirmed some well-known political dynamics, including stark divisions over abortion and gay marriage, with the more religiously committed taking conservative views on the issues.

But it also showed support across religious lines for greater governmental aid for the poor, even if it means more debt and stricter environmental laws and regulations.

By many measures, Americans are strongly religious: 92 percent believe in God, 74 percent believe in life after death and 63 percent say their respective scriptures are the word of God.

Doubts about God
But deeper investigation found that more than one in four Roman Catholics, mainline Protestants and Orthodox Christians expressed some doubts about God's existence, as did six in ten Jews.

Another finding almost defies explanation: 21 percent of self-identified atheists said they believe in God or a universal spirit, with 8 percent "absolutely certain" of it.

"Look, this shows the limits of a survey approach to religion," said Peter Berger, a theology and sociology professor at Boston University. "What do people really mean when they say that many religions lead to eternal life? It might mean they don't believe their particular truth at all. Others might be saying, 'We believe a truth but respect other people, and they are not necessarily going to hell.'"

Luis Lugo, director of the Pew Forum, said that more research is planned to answer those kinds of questions, but that earlier, smaller surveys found similar results.

Nearly across the board, the majority of religious Americans believe many religions can lead to eternal life: mainline Protestants (83 percent), members of historic black Protestant churches (59 percent), Roman Catholics (79 percent), Jews (82 percent) and Muslims (56 percent).

By similar margins, people in those faith groups believe in multiple interpretations of their own traditions' teachings. Yet 44 percent of the religiously affiliated also said their religion should preserve its traditional beliefs and practices.

"What most people are saying is, 'Hey, we don't have a hammer-lock on God or salvation, and God's bigger than us and we should respect that and respect other people,'" said the Rev. Tom Reese, a senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University.

"Some people are like butterflies that go from flower to flower, going from religion to religion — and frankly they don't get that deep into any of them," he said.

Beliefs about eternal life vary widely
Beliefs about eternal life vary greatly, even within a religious tradition.

Some Christians hold strongly to Jesus' words as described in John 14:6: "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." Others emphasize the wideness of God's grace.

The Catholic church teaches that the "one church of Christ ... subsists in the Catholic Church" alone and that Protestant churches, while defective, can be "instruments of salvation."

Roger Oldham, a vice president with the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, bristled at using the word "tolerance" in the analysis.

"If by tolerance we mean we're willing to engage or embrace a multitude of ways to salvation, that's no longer evangelical belief," he said. "The word 'evangelical' has been stretched so broadly, it's almost an elastic term."

Others welcomed the findings.

"It shows increased religious security. People are comfortable with other traditions even if they're different," said the Rev. C. Welton Gaddy, president of the Interfaith Alliance. "It indicates a level of humility about religion that would be of great benefit to everyone."

More than most groups, Catholics break with their church, and not just on issues like abortion and homosexuality. Only six in 10 Catholics described God as "a person with whom people can have a relationship" — which the church teaches — while three in 10 described God as an "impersonal force."

"The statistics show, more than anything else, that many who describe themselves as Catholics do not know or understand the teachings of their church," said Denver Roman Catholic Archbishop Charles Chaput. "Being Catholic means believing what the Catholic church teaches. It is a communion of faith, not simply of ancestry and family tradition. It also means that the church ought to work harder at evangelizing its own members."

Emphasis mine. The statistic about "atheist believers" hints at what I've suspected all along - that a lot of self-identified "atheists" are merely simpletons angry at a confusing cosmos, not people who could tell you what Occam's Razor is if you ran into them on the street.

[Ohma]

Why exactly do you jump there? To paraphrase a point made by someone on the richardawkins forums, there's no reason to believe that that 21% are what you or I would consider atheist, the questions on the survey determining who was placed where could just as easily have been along the lines of "x.Do You Consider Yourself to be Atheist? x.Do you Believe in a Higher Power?" I've known several people who would answer yes to both. (mostly wacky new-agers, and a few wiccans)

[TithonusSyndrome]

No, of course they wouldn't be. That was my point, and the archbishop's as well, for that matter - a lot of people, self-proclaimed atheists and Christians alike, have a poor idea of what the beliefs they're professing to have entail in full.

I know that Wolfgang Pauli was an atheist who believed in ghosts, which presents no conflict in and of itself, but it obviously leaves me with a bitter taste in my mouth as though he had missed the whole point of being an atheist. Again, if more of these "atheists" had fully fleshed-out and intellectually exhaustive cases built for their beliefs instead of just going on impulsive gut instinct like everyone seems to do chronically, they might understand that the same argument against god applies to ghosts, crystals, afterlifes and reincarnation. That's my beef, more than anything - the fact that people just don't think through their precious "beliefs".

[Rye]

There isn't such a "point" to being an atheist, it's merely an absence of theistic belief. People can come to that conclusion any number of ways. They don't stop being atheists if they believe in a godless afterlife or general feeling of fate. Those believing in some sort of "universal spirit" could be pantheists (some of whom could very well be considered atheistic) or simply idiots that don't know what atheist means.

You're apparently attributing false values to atheism if you're trying to shoehorn it into "logical disbeliever of religion", much as the christian does when he shoehorns christian into "moral believer in Jesus Christ". Atheism is symptomatic of (or perhaps even necessary for) clear thinking, but it is not anything more than the absence of one type of belief. That absence doesn't require logical thought at all.

[TithonusSyndrome]

You're apparently attributing false values to atheism if you're trying to shoehorn it into "logical disbeliever of religion", much as the christian does when he shoehorns christian into "moral believer in Jesus Christ". Atheism is symptomatic of (or perhaps even necessary for) clear thinking, but it is not anything more than the absence of one type of belief. That absence doesn't require logical thought at all.

No, not at all; I'm not about to get all Scotsman on anyone here. If someone says "I don't believe in God" and I don't have any significant reason to believe they're lying or in denial, then I'm prepared to accept their status as an a priori atheist. My point is that in practice, these people have picked poor ways to arrive at their conclusions that irritate me and make me frustrated with the premium (or lack thereof) put on thorough, rigorous logic as opposed to lazy, impulsive "gut feelings."

[Rye]

Welcome to the human race? What else can you do but accept that most people are just like that?

[TithonusSyndrome]

Raise a little awareness here and there about the difference between gut feelings and thorough logic? It's not much but going "phooey" and trying to live with it seems a little negligent to me. It doesn't occur to most people that they're not being "thorough" since they probably wallow in doubt and uncertainty about their beliefs for many sleepless nights.

[RIPP_n_WIPE]

This thread has kind of got my mind going from the other one on the definition of a Christian.

For my whole life up until a year ago I was a Jehovah's Witness, folks contemporary mainstream Christians say aren't Christians for one reason or a another (don't believe in the trinity blah blah blah). I have for about a year stopped going to meetings and have simply lived my life without concern about god or what not and have only thought about what's going on in my physical understandable universe. I'm adhering to the empirical truth, can you test that it's there? Yes, then I'll account for it and recognize it. No then I'm not wasting my time with it. Could it be "real"? I'm not saying it couldn't, but if you can't test for it then it's not worth my time, especially if just working on it isn't going to lead to something new/brighter/better. If somewhere down the line someone proved that god or leprechauns really existed I'd be more than willing to say good for them and take that knowledge into account.

Most of my fundie friends have taken this to mean I'm an atheist and I've been tentative about saying "I'm an Atheist." I really don't think I am one. I feel that this is in part due to me having some remaining religious hangups (the reason for is helpfully being explained by Fire_Flys Synaptic Plasticity thread) and because I feel more along the lines of "gods not necessary ergo I don't need to worry about it" vs "gods not there".

It's really hard to define your beliefs especially when you might want to call yourself one thing while others want to call you something else.

[Kanastrous]

Seems like what's being said is that my way isn't the only way but that any "way" has to somehow include faith in some kind of deity...

[Illuminatus Primus]

The problem comes from identifying with "atheists" as a social-cultural community and/or a quasi-belief system. Atheism means disbelief in deities. Period. People like Dr. Dawkins have tried to turn this on its head against theist bigots, but it really misses the point. The point is that skeptical non-belief in scientifically unreasonable and unsubstantiated beliefs and superstitions, be they "God," "angels," horoscopes, homeopathy, natural cures, etc. is the correct and reasonable choice. What this community should be about is empiricism and scientific thinking. That way we lose the issue of harping on "reasonable" versus "dogmatic" atheists and don't have ourselves weighed down by superstitious, irrational, inconsistent, or hypocritical atheists.