Survey says: Atheists most distrusted minority

Spendius, you need to sober up before you post. The original article does not claim that Miss Edgell, et all, had conducted the survey. Rather, it refers to a study of the data from an otherwise unspecified survey. I did the research here to attempt to identify the source study, which it appears i may have found. As Miss Edgell is silent on the topic, except for the single source at the Univesity of Minnesota College of Liberal Arts article, it is pertinent to review her credentials, and her possible stake in this topic.

Her career has been devoted to the study of family life among religious congregations. She can hardly be thought to have a proximate and unbiased interest in the lives of the unchurched, the agnostic or the atheist.

I guess, though, that your life's career shoving Flaubert's florid and badly written prose down the throats of unwilling undergraduates, when not down at the local drinking yourself into insensibility, gives you the necessary qualifications to comment on this tripe without doing the least investigation to back up your position, eh?

I, at least, took the trouble to do a little research. What have you done? Dragged your hangover and your ill-will toward me in here to puke up your contempt.

Do you have any pertinent information to offer on this survey and its results?

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I've continued to look around the Pew site, and "Religion and Politics: Contention and Consensus," published September 10, 2003, and referring to a nation-wide survey of 2002 adults conducted from June 24 to July 8, 2003 is the only survey which i can find which remotely refers to the topic. As i've said, i don't intend to download the survey to peruse it.

The originally posted article refers to the American Mosaic Project at the University of Minnesota, funded by the David Edelstein Family Foundation. They have a web site, which refers to a survey which will be conducted, and which states that it (the web site) has last been updated in June, 2003 !

No information is provided as to whether or not the survey were ever conducted. If one attempts to access the link for "Project News," one is asked for a log-in ID and password, and no provision is made to register at that site. Therefore, i was unable to obtain any information on whether or not they rely upon their own information, or the Pew survey which is mentioned in the Universityof Minnesota College of Liberal Arts article.

The only details on what was intended for the survey are as follows, from the American Mosaic Project site:

Quote:

A major component of the American Mosaic Project is a national survey, sponsored by the David Edelstein Family Foundation. The project will commission telephone interviews of 2000 Americans across the country. The survey will ask questions about the meaning of being an American; views of diversity and difference; attitudes about modern issues such as crime, welfare, education, immigration; and information regarding respondents' life and background.

We will use Random Digit Dialing (RDD) techniques, in which telephone numbers are randomly determined by computer, to ensure the sample is nationally representative. We will not ask for the respondents' name or other information that can be used to identify any individual who has been interviewed. After we reach a household, whose identity is unknown to the interviewers, an adult respondent will be selected at random, and asked questions about their behaviors, attitude, and beliefs, and it will last about 25-30 minutes.

The demographic basis is shakey, at best. Whether or not the originally posted article refers to the results of the survey project, and whether or not said survey was ever conducted i cannot determine. No information is available on what questions were asked, nor what statistical methodology would be employed to make the results meaningful.

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Setanta
Any poll about atheism would be flawed from the outset because most I believe that atheists are usually unwilling to state their non-belief publicly. I also know several people who profess to be agnostic because of the hatred inflicted on avowed atheists.

Through my long life of atheism, very few people knew of my non-belief, probably because the subject never was important in our lives.

During the 1970s, I worked very closely with two missionaries to support a Bolivian village cooperative that produced beautiful Llama wool ponchos. We arranged to import their ponchos and I sold them to the members of a very large consumer cooperative in the San Francisco Bay Area. We sent thousands of dollars to the women members of the Bolivian cooperative, which helped to improve their lives.

One day, during a luncheon of ten people in a private home, the subject of atheism came up. I informed the missionaries of my atheism, which shocked them. They immediately and indignantly informed me that I was not an atheist; that I was a secular humanist!

BBB

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I can find no web site for a David Edelstein Family foundation. There is more than one Edelstein family foundation to be discovered if one does web searches. They differ by the first name or names which appear. An Edelstein Family Foundation (first name not specified) is listed as number 39 in the top fifty Minnesota charitable foundations. I can find no site which provides information on a David Edelstein Family Foundation which would have funded Miss Edgell's proposed study, nor can i find current information on the proposed survey and its results.

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What is Secular Humanism?
What is Secular Humanism?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secular_humanism

BBB

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What came over for me reading the interiew with Ms Edgell from the link is that Americans feel the need for a religious background to their lives and the whole debate is about finding new theological positions in this highly charged world and that they feel that atheists are not the answer.

The debate might be seen as a democratic Council of Trent which didn't,I presume,include any atheists either.

Ms Edgell is certainly correct to point to the difficult complexities of the issue and it is noteworthy that her language is balanced and even-handed unlike the language of a number of avowed non-believers or apostates.

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Who is D.I.?

I was going by the article (Cereal Killer's link worked the second time I tried it, but not the first, dunno why).

In the article, Penny Edsel said and someone else wrote wrote:

"Atheists, who account for about 3 percent of the U.S. population,"

Ah, while getting that quote I just saw that detano inipo threw out some stats, too, that wasn't where I got it though.

More info:

It seems that the findings are based on an original survey:

Quote:

Three University of Minnesota sociology professors--Penny Edgell, Joseph Gerteis, and Doug Hartmann--have begun the three-year American Mosaic Project to look at race and religion in America.

The project recently completed a national survey which questioned people about their views on race, religion, tolerance, and prejudice.

(Emphasis mine.)

http://www1.umn.edu/umnnews/Feature_Stories/Who_we_fear_and_who_we_tolerate_in_America.html

Here's the project's home page (not much useful info):

http://www.soc.umn.edu/amp/

Here's the press release:

http://www.soc.umn.edu/amp/pubs/AMP_Press_Release.pdf

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Setanta-

In case you haven't worked it out yet I think Ms Edgell is marketing her books and promoting her career.

She is not the subject.The American people are the subject and what they are going to do about what is self-evidently a burning issue for better of for worse.It is not a personal issue for me.I know what intelligent people will make of your vituperations.

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Soz, you're kind of slow this morning. You ask who D.I. is, and then immediately thereafter refer to detano inipo . . .

Spendius, i didn't need your hangover to tell me that all academics publish to further their careers. Had you been reading and paying attention, rather than being so eager to find something in which i wrote to complain of, you'd have seen that i've already pointed that out.

Actually, she is the issue, as it appears that she is attempting to portray the American people in an unrealistic manner in order to further her career. The true attitudes of the American people would be interesting on this topic, but there is no reason to assume that Miss Edgell will provide reliable information on that topic.

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In a bit (not that much, but I got bored) of looking, I couldn't find a website for the Edelstein Family Foundation, but it does seem to exist, going by many references to it, including this list of top 50 Minnesota Foundations by assets:

http://www.mcf.org/MCF/giving/top50assets.htm

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Yes, Setanta, that's why I said:

Quote:

Ah, while getting that quote I just saw that detano inipo threw out some stats, too, that wasn't where I got it though.

Translation: "Ah, now I see, when you said D.I. you meant detano inipo. However, that is not where I got the 3% figure, I got it from the original article that CerealKiller posted."

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Soz, i already linked the home page of the American Mosaic Project, and already noted that it has not been updated since June 12, 2003--so it means little in this conversation.

The report you linked of the study is interesting, but it does not list their demographic controls methodology, nor the sample size, nor the questions asked.

It would be more interesting to see the study data itself--the questions and the demographic controls protocol (including sample size and how obtained).

The Pew Charitable Trusts surveys are more interesting, to me at least, at present, as one can find exactly how they were conducted, the questions asked and the demographic controls protocol.

I'm having a hell of a time opening that press release PDF (an awfully strange format for a press release), so maybe some of the answers to the questions i have will be there.

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For example, Soz, the UMN News article you linked has the following statement:

Quote:

Antisemitism is not driven by religious intolerance, but by competition. It's not a Jewish person's belief that threatens others; it's his or her success. For example, 12 percent of the respondents thought Jewish people held too much power, but when researchers looked only at participants living in areas of high unemployment, that number went up to 17 percent.

If the sample were 2000 adults, 12% would be 240, a not insignificant number, although among 2000 respondants, the margin of error can eliminate one quarter of those respondants. But then it refers to areas of high unemployment, and speaks of 17%. That's 17% of how many respondants? The significance of that result is hidden by the lack of demographic control information.

I'm still waiting for that PDF page to open, and growing rather impatient with it.

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The content of the press release is pretty much identical to what is here (I think it may be precisely identical):

http://www1.umn.edu/umnnews/Feature_Stories/Who_we_fear_and_who_we_tolerate_in_America.html

The press release is dated 4/19/2004, so at least that was added since the "last modified" date, which you cite correctly.

At any rate, I am suspicious of various aspects of it, too.

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Here's an intersting page on religious affiliation in the United States at Religious Tolerance-dot-org.

I was amused to see that "Wiccan" is listed as the fastest growing religious affiliation, given how often the Muslims here have been ranting lately that Islam is the fastest growing religion.

It mentions that 3% of the people in North Dakota had no affiliation, while 25% of the people in the state of Washington had no affiliation. Minnesota and North Dakota are close enough culturally as well as physically to account for that silliness in the opening article.

I found this interesting and to-the-point on the topic of agnostics and atheists:

The 'About Religious Data' Section at Religious Tolerance-dot-org wrote:

Many sources also ignore an amorphous group who may variously describe themselves as Agnostics, Atheists, Ethical Culturalists, Freethinkers, Humanists, or Secularists. In addition, there are also the "none of the aboves" -- individuals who may believe in God and may follow the Golden Rule, but regard themselves as not being part of any organized religious group.

The Religious Tolerance-dot-org information is far more reliable, in my estimation, as they provide detailed information about their survey sources, and about the difficulties in obtaining the information.

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Her source is not the Pew Trust survey (I read all their questions).

Her methodology seems to be pretty much the same as the Pew, judging from above posts. Randomization seems to be nationwide, judging from above, and survey size is quite a bit above the usual politcal polling surveys, which are usually around 1000 randomized subjects, which produce statistically significant results for a population the size of the US.. That should significantly reduce the margin of error.

Her publications are consistent with the usual academic number, actually pretty good.

She is listed on other sites as Edgell Becker for older cites, and Edgell in later cites, but if discussing a name change isn't a red herring for an intelligent discussion, I don't know what is (regarding certain posts above).

And reading her interviews, she is obviously interested in changing roles of religion in people's lives, and changing outlooks shaped by religious views. That's one of the things that sociology of religion is all about. Certainly exploring the views of Americans regarding religious faith or lack of it is consonant with that, and I see no evidence of her personal religious views affecting that.

And doitano (only encountered him/her once before, unsure of name, and everytime I scroll up when in the midst of an answer, I lose everything I've typed, so I'm not gonna do it here, and set calls him d.i., you know who I mean) cites a range of atheism in Sweden because that's what the surveys show
http://www.pitzer.edu/academics/faculty/zuckerman/atheism.html
not because of any suspicious imprecision on his/her part.

I suspect that that post was meant as a semi-humorous post at the anti-atheists, so jumping on him/her, strikes me as inappropriate. Tho we do know that correlation is not the same as causation. Don't we.

Seems to me this topic is suffering from a bad case of "shoot the messenger".

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Setanta wrote-

Quote:

Actually, she is the issue, as it appears that she is attempting to portray the American people in an unrealistic manner in order to further her career. The true attitudes of the American people would be interesting on this topic, but there is no reason to assume that Miss Edgell will provide reliable information on that topic.

She cannot be the issue.It is the credulity of those who think she is the issue that is the issue.How can one woman be an issue.Evolutionary science teaches that if there is a niche in which an organism can get a living there will be an organism in it.Thus if she vacates the niche it will be filled by another.

What difference does it make how she attempts to portray the American people if nobody takes any notice.I certainly wouldn't take the slightest notice of the study but it interests me why others do and what forces are in play promoting it and why.It made me laugh.

The "true attitudes of the American people" are not really a subject for exposure on such a delicate site as this.There are various methods of putting pretty curtains around them and Ms Edgell,it seems to me,is offering one such.It happens in all nations to a certain extent.

As Ms Lola once said-"We're all rats." Which is an Essdeeoid position I not only respect but agree with.Civilised just means having nicer curtains and Ms Edgell works in one of the curtain shops in preference to other occupations.

Atheists have no curtains if they are for real but there's a number of avowed atheists who plough the same field as the dear lady.

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The above cite for atheism in Sweden is interesting too because it shows survey results for a wide range of countries, including most of the industrial democracies. We are far, far down in the list in terms of percentage of atheists. No surprise there.

It also deals with some of the methodological questions and survey imprecisions and reluctance to be identified as an atheist. And those of us who are certainly know first-hand some of those constraints as they apply here.

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Spendius, as usual, make little sense. However he makes a little more sense than usual, when he says she is not the issue. She isn't. The reults are.

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:-)

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Survey says: Atheists most distrusted minority

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