If atheists try to discourage religious conversion, would we ben even more demonized?

Alright, so there IS between 2 and 30 million, I just shot a little high. But you are probably right; I view most deist and other such religions as basically people who are atheists in every way but just can't quite make that step. I have one brother, and he's just like that; no church, no ceremony, no praying, no giving thinks or confession or limits on what he eats, drinks, says, etc (well, MORAL limits, yes, just not arbitrary ones), but he just doesn't call himself atheist, because he feels a deep-down "wrong" feeling when he thinks about the idea. I guess that is built in with that deep-down "rosy all over" feeling indoctrinated theists get when they pray. Yeah, if we scholarly defined all the various religions and atheism, then asked questions of americans, we'd probably find, I dunno, at least a good 10 million that were clearly and solidly atheist.

Ah, anyway, thanks for the info.

Adam, I have a quick question; how many atheists are there? I have read, recently, anywhere from maybe 5 to 30 million. You read more of this than I, so do you have a more solid idea about this?

That is a good question. The most comprehensive survey on the matter that I know of is still the CUNY 2001 ARIS survey (http://www.gc.cuny.edu/faculty/research_briefs/aris/key_findings.htm). If its findings are correct, and assuming demographics haven't shifted dramatically since it was taken, there are about 1 million self-described atheists in the United States and about an equal number of self-described agnostics. Not that many, considering there are around 160 million Christians.

However, that survey also included a blanket "non-religious" category, to which almost 30 million adults, about 15% of the American population (if the study's extrapolation is correct) claim membership. Not all of these people are atheists, of course; many could be deists, New Agers, or other people who believe in some form of God but reject organized religion. However, I'm confident that a substantial percentage of these people would be best described as atheists, and are only avoiding that word because of its negative connotations (which, of course, this very post discusses). The best that can be said, then, is that there are between 2 and 30 million atheists in the USA. I don't know of any data of equivalent quality for other countries, though I'm sure it's out there, and I'm likewise sure that many other countries have significantly greater numbers of atheists than we do.

Uh… 1000 hits in three days would only make one sucker every 4.32 minutes [on average].

So P.T. Barnum was correct to within an order of magnitude? :)

The problem, however, is that this could backfire, transferring the stigma associated with Atheism to those causes by association and making people less enthused about them.

That's certainly a possibility worth considering, though I see it as more of a concern for specifically political causes than for general charitable organizations. After all, the religious right is already working as hard as they can to demonize every liberal group as a pack of atheists (with the consent, through silence, of the progressive religious left). However, I sincerely doubt that people would, say, stop donating to the Red Cross or Habitat for Humanity just because they knew atheists were working there. Call me a foolish optimist, but I'm confident that human nature is better than that.

And I ramble when it's late; sorry about that.

Hmm. I wonder whether it would be a good or bad thing to make a special effort to vocally attach ourselves as a community to positive social causes. On the one hand, it could help (reasonable) people see that we care about the same things they do, and that we're as willing to work to improve the lives of others as they are (or more--I imagine that a bunch of "the godless heathens are making us look bad" type sermons, while doing little for the public's perception of Atheism, would at least have a substantial motivational effect on moderate Christians to be more generous and compassionate in their actions). The problem, however, is that this could backfire, transferring the stigma associated with Atheism to those causes by association and making people less enthused about them. Adam, thoughts?