Report: Americans Change Faiths at Rising Rate
 

[url=http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/25/us/25cnd-religion.html]Americans Change Faiths at Rising Rate, Report Finds[/url]
[quote]The rise of the unaffiliated does not mean that Americans are becoming less religious, however. Contrary to assumptions that most of the unaffiliated are atheists or agnostics, most described their religion “as nothing in particular.”[/quote]

Umm ... isn't "nothing in particular" in re. matters of faith more or less the definition of agnostic?

[Perhaps we need to draw a distinction between "credulous' and "skeptical" agnostics?]

[QUOTE=ewmayer;127108][url=http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/25/us/25cnd-religion.html]Americans Change Faiths at Rising Rate, Report Finds[/url]


Umm ... isn't "nothing in particular" in re. matters of faith more or less the definition of agnostic?

[Perhaps we need to draw a distinction between "credulous' and "skeptical" agnostics?][/QUOTE]
A lot of people want to think of themselves as Christians, but want an "out." I haven't attended church in years, but try very hard to be Christ-like.

If I don't want someone to know I'm Christian, I just don't mention it. Recently, I decided that I wanted to totally abandon the habit of wearing Christian themed t-shirts. I still believe the messages on the shirts, I just didn't want to visually state that to every random person I encountered.

Maybe the problem with the terms "atheist" and "agnostic" is that they tend to be used in predominantly christian countries to indicate respectively not believing the *christian* faith and not knowing if *christianity* is the true faith. I think some people may be quite correctly acknowledging that there are other major religions in the world too and therefore they prefer to say that they have no particular religion rather than use the loaded agnostic term.

[QUOTE=Brian-E;127150]Maybe the problem with the terms "atheist" and "agnostic" is that ...[/QUOTE]

How many Americans are familiar with the term "humanist" and the meaning of the term?

[quote=Brian-E;127150]I think some people may be quite correctly acknowledging that there are other major religions in the world too and therefore they prefer to say that they have no particular religion rather than use the loaded agnostic term.[/quote]But this particular survey did not restrict responses that way -- as shown at [URL]http://pewresearch.org/pubs/743/united-states-religion[/URL], where not only are Buddhists (for example) specifically totalled, but are subdivided as Zen Buddhist, Theravada Buddhist, Tibetan Buddhist, or other Buddhist. So any specific anti-loaded-term preference had freedom to be expressed here rather than being shoehorned into "Unaffiliated".

Edit: In the full report [URL]http://religions.pewforum.org/pdf/report-religious-landscape-study-full.pdf[/URL], starting on page 121 are the specific instructions to the interviewer as to what to ask about religion. Respondents had freedom to specify any non-Christian religion without being forced or persuaded to choose "agnostic" or any other "unaffiliated" category.

[quote=cheesehead;127203]But this particular survey did not restrict responses that way -- as shown at [URL]http://pewresearch.org/pubs/743/united-states-religion[/URL], where not only are Buddhists (for example) specifically totalled, but are subdivided as Zen Buddhist, Theravada Buddhist, Tibetan Buddhist, or other Buddhist. So any specific anti-loaded-term preference had freedom to be expressed here rather than being shoehorned into "Unaffiliated".

Edit: In the full report [URL]http://religions.pewforum.org/pdf/report-religious-landscape-study-full.pdf[/URL], starting on page 121 are the specific instructions to the interviewer as to what to ask about religion. Respondents had freedom to specify any non-Christian religion without being forced or persuaded to choose "agnostic" or any other "unaffiliated" category.[/quote]

Yes, I was of course simply challenging Professor Mayer's interpretation of the term "agnostic". I agree with you that this survey was carried out well enough to allow non-religious respondents to distinguish themselves from people who don't believe or cannot decide about christianity.

[quote=tha;127154]How many Americans are familiar with the term "humanist" and the meaning of the term?[/quote]

That's an important question considering the size of the USA and its influence on the rest of the world. I hope that the number of people aquainted with humanism is increasing. A world dominated by humanist ideals would be a very harmonious one. That is not an anti-religious statement in case anyone reading this might interpret it as such: humanism can happily co-exist with all sorts of beliefs provided those beliefs are kept as private matters unrelated to everyday human affairs.