Why so-called atheists believe in God, Heaven, and even the Bible

[rug]

Tobin Grant | Nov 4, 2014

There was shock and disbelief when I posted a graphic showing how different American faiths differed in their belief in God. The graph showed that a fraction of self-identified atheists expressed absolute certainty that there is a “God or universal spirit.”

That’s right: some atheists believe in God.

While no one seemed surprised that no religious group had all of its members believe in God, some readers were incredulous that the survey found any atheists who believed in God.

Those results were conservative because I only included those who were “absolutely certain” about their belief in God. It turns out that in the Pew Religious Landscape Survey, one-in-five self-identified atheists believe in God. The survey found that these atheists hold other religious beliefs. Eleven percent believe in Heaven (or a place of eternal reward for being good). And six percent say that the Bible is “the word of God” and not a book of fables.

http://tobingrant.religionnews.com/2014/11/04/atheists-believe-god-heaven-bible-college/

[unrepentant progress]

1. I've been pointing out the number of atheists who told Pew they believe in God for years

'Atheist' and 'agnostic' are about as worthless as descriptive terms as 'God.' Nobody knows what those words mean, yet everybody thinks they know.

[Trajan]

2. What ridiculous, utter nonsense ...

'Some atheists' ?

SOME atheists are just as bat shit loony as theists ...

[immoderate]

3. Many people are confused.

Explained.

--imm

[BlueJazz]

4. I don't understand. I don't believe in gods..Period...or Heaven..Period..or Word of god..Period.

I'm an Atheist. How can I ( or anyone) believe partially and still be an Atheist. ?

[arcane1]

5. I wonder if there was any leg-pulling on the part of the pollees.

[BlueJazz]

7. Boy..if they did, they hooked me like a big trout.

[upaloopa]

6. That makes no sense. You can't by definition

believe in god and be an atheist.
Why are you posting this?
Why can't you just let people have their beliefs and you have yours.
Should we look for a bunch of theists that don't believe in god?

[safeinOhio]

8. Taoism has the perfect answer

for an agnostic. "The tao that can be described
is not the eternal Tao."

[cbayer]

9. As he points out, this is one of the problems with labels.

Clearly some people are using a different definition and one that doesn't even make sense.

People should be able to call themselves whatever they want, but it might be helpful to ask them what they mean by that before making any assumptions.

By the way, I consider myself neither an atheist nor a theist, but an agnostic.

No one gets to define me. I won't be labeled as something I don't want to be labeled as. I'm not ashamed of being an agnostic and I am not just a cowardly atheist. I am proud of who I am and I will push back.

Just wanted to take the opportunity to say that.

[unrepentant progress]

10. I call myself an agnostic apatheistic atheist

I can't know if there are any gods, but I sure don't believe they exist. In the end though I can't see that it makes much difference in my life either way.

[cbayer]

14. I am also comfortable with the term apatheist.

I really don't care whether there is a god or not and don't think it would change anything for me personally either way.

And I don't really care whether others believe in a god or not, as long as they respect the rights of others to believe or not believe.

I think there are lots of people like you and lots of people like me.

[unrepentant progress]

15. It's where the major growth in religious nones is happening, especially among younger people

At least if you're inclined to believe the polls. And then there's Rabbi Sherwin Wine's ignoticism -- ignostics believe that people assume so much about the concept of god as to render any position nonsensical. It's a sort of theological noncognitivism -- that religious language is cognitively meaningless -- which is what I expressed in my first post in this thread. I think many religious nones fall into these two categories, but generally label themselves as atheists even though being ignostic does not preclude belief in god or the afterlife.

[cbayer]

16. The nones are a very interesting group and cover a wide spectrum of

beliefs and non-beliefs.

I have very limited understanding of Ignosticism or noncognitivism, but I don't doubt that there are nones that fall into those groups.

[RedstDem]

11. agnostic aren't cowards

They're just playing it safe!

Just kidding, anyone that calls themselves an atheist and confirms they believe in god just means they need a dictionary

[cbayer]

13. As the author points out, they may be using different

definitions of good when they say they are atheist and they believe in god.

I don't know how else to make sense out of it.

It is telling, though, that the number of people who do this decreases with education.

[pinto]

12. Geez, I rankle at labels and many polls. Both seem to be a snapshot w/out context.

There's a value in them to an extent, I guess, but they are like still pictures of a train running along its course. Much of what they overlook is the journey, imo.

[beam me up scottie]

17. "Why some so-called theists don't believe in gods"

Why some so-called vegetarians eat meat.

Why some so-called liberals support the largest and most powerful misogynistic and homophobic organization on the planet.



Wait, where was this going again?

[rug]

19. Let me know if you need a map.

[AtheistCrusader]

18. I think this phenomena was explained in the movie "Pitch Black".

"You got it all wrong, holy man. I absolutely believe in God... and I absolutely *hate* the motherfucker."

If those 'atheists' aren't in fact, Anti-Theists or some variant thereof, I have no idea what these people taking, or administering the survey were smoking.