Perspective on atheist believers

[baxil]

I've seen the statistic cited a few times today that 21 percent of (American) atheists believe in a higher power, which is roughly as absurd as saying that 21 percent of vegetarians eat meat.

It's pretty easy to make more out of a statement like that than the data really implies, and people have been rightly skeptical. But in chipuni's discussion

Comments

[dancinglights]

Thank you for sharing the link to the original study. This is the kind of thing I find more frustrating than fascinating when I find newsfeeds quoting numbers and interpreting them poorly, and can't find the original information myself. Especially important information like "what choices were available for undecideds and others to box themselves by and skew the numbers." Also thanks for the number crunching interpretations, I like what you have to say far better than the frustrating newsfeeds :P

[joysweeper]

Interesting. I guess when it comes to surveys, athiesm is a catchall grouping. Modern faith is very complicated and individual. As it should be.

... I don't really get how anyone decides that "athiest = satanist" at all. Some people are paranoid, I suppose.

[baxil]

I certainly wasn't trying to imply atheist=Satanist. If I did, my apologies to any offended atheists and/or Satanists out there.

I was simply trying to state that, due to popular misconception that "atheist" means "against the Christian God" (a misconception often actively encouraged by the Christian fundamentalists), there exists a class of people who actively believe in the Christian mythology and who nevertheless label themselves "atheist" due to that mistaken belief. These hypothetical folk are people who, properly speaking, are Satanists, but are misinformed as to the definition of the term they use.

[joysweeper]

I know you weren't, and I should have made that more clear. It just confuses me how anyone thinks it.

That's as good an explanation as any, thanks. I suppose there's also the belief some less-than-accepting factions have that worshipping anything but the Christian God(and in some cases a very specific version, too) is the same as devilworship.