Things Atheists Hate #1: Media Coverage of Polls
October 1st, 2008 by PinPonPun
The recent US Religious Landscape Survey featured some fascinating data about the religious make-up of the American populace, but the biggest number to come out of the survey was the infamous “21% of atheists believe in God” that stirred up quite a bit of discussion on the internet and in the media. Everyone had something to say about this stat; many found humor in the fact.
Some posited that this indicated atheism was becoming more of a cultural designation as opposed to a theological statement; others thought atheists must simply be confused about what atheism really means. But everyone mentioned that same seemingly absurd phrase — “21% of atheists believe in God.”
Most people, however, simply repeated the quote as they found it in the media; few took the time to actually examine the poll question itself being referenced. As someone who previously worked for a firm that did considerable amounts of political polling, I was curious; when forming a poll, the particular phrasing of a question can easily sway or alter the poll results and it seemed odd to me that self-identified atheists, when asked “Do you believe in god?” would answer in the affirmative.
So imagine my surprise when I found that the actual question was:
Do you believe in God or a universal spirit? [IF YES, ASK:] How certain are you about this belief? Are you absolutely certain, fairly certain, not too certain, or not at all certain?
That wording shows that the oft-quoted phrase should actually be “21% of atheists believe in God or a universal spirit” — a statement with a potentially different meaning, especially depending on one’s personal interpretation of what a “universal spirit” is. Baruch Spinoza might have argued that he believed in a “universal spirit” despite not believing in any sense of personal or self-aware god; Albert Einstein might identify himself as an atheist and yet make the same claim,
In fact, there is a whole movement of “spiritual atheists” — those that do not believe in any god or gods but do believe in the possibility of either individual spirits or a universal one.
Yet still, the 21% number is bandied about further reinforcing ill-informed public opinion on the nature of atheism and providing those that already view atheists so negatively with another piece of faulty evidence they can use to support their theistic worldview.
Atheists hate faulty evidence.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 1st, 2008 at 7:58 am and is filed under Atheism, Ponderings, Things Atheists Hate. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
October 1st, 2008 at 9:11 am
The marketplace of ideas gets seriously corrupted when the confluence of financial incentives (we need to sell papers/advertising!) mixes with a non-critical public (we don’t have time/don’t care to look beyond the headline!). I believe this is fundamentally behind the resurgence of creationism. The media believes both creationists and scientists deserve “equal time,” and fostering heated arguments between them only serve to attract ratings or sell papers. Meanwhile, the public is not provided with sufficient context to recognize that one side is making claims with no basis in fact while discounting the other side’s scientific facts as “claims,” thus creating a false parity between the two.
All of this serves as an argument to me for increased funding for public media. On the BBC, a creationist would not be able to get away with “intelligent design” arguments without being held to task by presenting proof.