I have to agree with Ebonmuse that disagreement in the public sphere is a good thing. The more people disagree on this or that subject, the less that subject can be used to rally some people against others. So what we have here is a double-dose of awesome, as the bloc of Fanatical Wrong voters dissolves to fuel the rather (racially) well-distributed increase in "nones." Sure, "others" may be increasing as well (note to self: look that up!), but I can be happy with the population splintered on the matter of whether supernatural nonsense is supernatural nonsense or Tru Fax. What I don't like to see is... well... a bloc of Fanatical Wrong voters united in thinking that their particular branch of mumbo-jumbo is Tru Fax, their leaders cynically using that shared belief as a buzzword to rally for a bunch of awful causes (Prop 8, "Academic Freedom," UN Resolution 62-154, etc.). The less susceptible we are to this kind of buzzword rallying, the more rational discourse can prevail.

It is also good news for those in the U.S. who do not want to see science education compromised by religious activists who want to substitute creation mythology for empirical science.

One caveat I'm keeping in mind about this study is that 27% of the Nones indicated that they had a belief in a personal God (i.e., they are theists). I'm not sure the comparisons with the general population would come out the same way if this subgroup of theists were to be removed from the None category. For example, the belief in horoscopes comparison might show more of a difference if these theists were removed from the None category.

There might also be different reasons why the general population and Nones show about the same distribution in degree of belief/disbelief in horoscopes. For example, most Nones would probably reject horoscopes on the grounds that horoscopes are unscientific, whereas there would be religious people in the general population who reject horoscopes as representing competing (and therefore false!) claims about the supernatural.

The comparison between Nones and the general population (which includes Nones) also probably weakens the power of the comparison. I believe the comparison that ought to have been made in this study is between the religious and the non-religious. One wonders why the researchers chose to compare Nones versus baseline instead of Nones versus Religious. Based on other research, I believe that a direct comparison between religious and non-religious groups would show results that are unflattering for the religious (e.g., in Western societies, the non-religious generally have higher levels of education than do the religious).

The agnostic group (including strong and weak versions) presents a problem of interpretation. In the U.S. context, I suspect that a lot of non-believers claim to be agnostic to avoid being labeled as atheists, though technically agnostics are atheists anyway in the minimal sense that they lack a belief in God/gods. I would like to see these agnostics also asked on the questionnaire "Are you agnostic with regards to Zeus?" "Are you agnostic with regards to Allah?" And so on. I suspect that many of these "agnostics" are being non-committal about their belief in the mainstream deity in the U.S. (the Christian God).

If people are moving away from religion purely as a result of disrespect for authority or an apathetic reaction to 'higher' matters then we have not really moved very far at all. We remove the dangerous side of religion from people but if they do not embrace science, scepticism and reason then they are still in danger of following some other cultish figures. I refer you to the huge growth in spiritualism, mediums, accupuncture, homeopathy, crystal healing, feng shui and the always popular horoscopes.

This is true, keddaw, but while the growth of woo isn't much of an achievement in a rational sense, it could be a big one in a political sense. The more factions and sects there are, the more divided and disorganized religious groups are, the less any one group will have the political muscle to impose its will on all the rest of us. That's worth celebrating, for that reason at least, so I think any move toward a more diverse religious landscape is a good thing.

Every time I hear that I wonder what in the world she thought an atheist was.

Maybe she thought "atheist" was a generic synonym for "bad person". She certainly wouldn't be the first theist to think that way.

If that's the case, it seems clear that non-theist organizations must do a better job of reaching those racial/ethnic minorities who do not believe in god or are at least unaffiliated with a religion.

It may be also that there's a greater stigma of "coming out" as an unbeliever in some racial groups and that keeps people of color away from the official gatherings of non-believers. Food for thought.

I've seen people come up with very tortured arguments and bizarre definitions to account for their refusal to call themselves atheists even though their lack of belief places them squarely in that cathegory, and I find the phenomenon puzzling, to say the least.

I refer to the shocking numbers of Americans who don't believe in evolution, or the number who think the earth is thousands rather than thousands of millions of years old.

If people are moving away from religion purely as a result of disrespect for authority or an apathetic reaction to 'higher' matters then we have not really moved very far at all. We remove the dangerous side of religion from people but if they do not embrace science, scepticism and reason then they are still in danger of following some other cultish figures. I refer you to the huge growth in spiritualism, mediums, accupuncture, homeopathy, crystal healing, feng shui and the always popular horoscopes. This is before going on to mention charismatic leaders spouting all kinds of superficially-intelligent nonsense that unquestioning people follow: from Fox News to gang leaders, from self-help gurus to political talking heads.

I think we should keep the Champagne on ice and keep pushing for a geniune rational worldview, from our elected representatives at least if not from the populous.

It's not clear how they reconcile all this with their earlier findings that about 12% of Americans are atheists and another 12% are deists, based on their stated beliefs. Wouldn't that put us nearly at the 25% mark already?

I assume that a large portion of the 12% atheists and the 12% deists describe themselves as members of some religion (they go to church, &c.), but fit ALIS's definition of those categories based on their stated beliefs. Interesting.

Although "nones" show a decided gender imbalance - 60% of them are male, while the general population is 51% female[...]

Amanda Marcotte hypothesized in a recent Pandagon article that women (American women?) are more likely to affiliate themselves with social groups in general, rather than just religions. (American?) women are also more likely to call themselves members of a political party, for example. It would be interesting to know how much of the disparity in the 'nones' category that accounts for.

I'm wondering, though, how many of these nones are afflicted with various sorts of nonreligious but illogical bullshit... I have known quite a few woo-lovers who don't do the god/church thing. Anecdotal, yes, but I doubt my experience is unique. It'd be nice to see some solid data on more specific beliefs - has this been done?