Morning Joe - Religion Poll

[TruthBeTold65]

Last edited Thu Mar 1, 2012, 02:37 PM - Edit history (1)

I don't have the actual poll but if someone does please post it...but a poll was put up on the screen on Morning Joe this morning in relation to an interview with a person from Time Magazine who was talking about an article in the latest magazine called "10 Ideas That Are Changing Your Life". In it there is a sub-article for #4 called "THE RISE OF THE NONES BY AMY SULLIVAN". Now, I am going to do this from memory but here goes:

Protastant ??
Catholic ??
Jewish ??
"Nones" 16%
Atheist 4%
.
.
.

Do you see it? The poll tried to place "Atheist" as a "religion". WTF?! Is everyone outside of atheism ignorant as to what the word means?

UPDATE: Here is the actual poll...

Title: RISE OF THE NONES
SubTitle: AMERICAN RELIGIONS
Protestant 51%
Catholic 24%
"Nones" 16%
Atheist 4%
Mormon 2%
Jewish 2%
Muslim 1%

(It is definitely pointing out "Atheism" as a religion)

[randr]

1. Like it or not Atheism is a subscripton of belief

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

[dmallind]

2. Ah yes that revered philosophy reference wikipedia.

And even they got it more right than most

"Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities.[1] In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities.[2][3] Most inclusively, atheism is simply the absence of belief that any deities exist.[3]"

An absence of belief is not a belief.

[Warpy]

6. Oh, lookie, another definition written by a believer!

Believers simply can't comprehend disbelief and they write their definitions accordingly.

Athiesm is a belief like not playing soccer is a sport.

[cleanhippie]

13. Like it or not, you are only trying to convince yourself.

And if believing what you post helps you sleep better...

[Joseph8th]

16. Wikipedia is not the final arbiter of intellectual disputes. Next. nt

[dmallind]

3. Unfortunately, yes.

Is everyone outside of atheism ignorant as to what the word means?

Most are. Some pretend to be to score cheap dishonest debate points for idiots in the audience to bite on ("atheism is just another belief!" "you have the burden of proof too" and other such utter clueless shite). And unfortunately some inside of atheism are little better, having these lies drilled into them for decades by venal believers.

[randr]

4. Unfortunately, yes

A theism is literally a theism

[dmallind]

5. What does that mean?

[MarkCharles]

7. Black is really white, and the sky is green, and...

baldness is a hair color, and OFF is a TV channel, too, right?

[enuegii]

10. A theism is literally a theism, yes...

but atheism is literally not a theism.

It's as simple as 1+1+1=3, although there are those who seem to have problems with that.

[muriel_volestrangler]

8. No, I don't see it - you're the first to mention 'religion'

Now, it's possible that 'Morning Joe', or Time, claimed 'atheist' is a religion - but you don't say so.

I suspect this was the 2008 ARIS survey, which first started talking about 'Nones' as a category, and asked:

"What is your religion, if any?" http://commons.trincoll.edu/aris/files/2011/08/NONES_08.pdf (page ii)

[Ilsa]

9. The numbers were something like this:

Protestant: 51%
Catholic: 26%
Jewish: 5%
Muslim: 2%

Yes, the Nones was 16%. that describes a lot of former church members that are dissatisfied with organized religion, don't want to be pressured into giving money to a group that squanders or misappropriates it, or uses it to work against their best interests on things like birth control, political issues, etc.

I think the poll was to impress upon the reader that there are nonbelievers, not that Atheists are a religion.

[Arugula Latte]

11. I think some religious people are finally "getting" that not everybody believes in nonsense.

It surprises them.

My only explanation is that the Internet has made nonbelievers more visible and more vocal.

[muriel_volestrangler]

12. So that was the Morning Joe caption, not the poll?

A sloppy shortening to fit on the screen? We don't have the poll question yet.

[TruthBeTold65]

14. Poll question is irrelevant...

the key to this post invovles the sub-title..."American Religions". They have "atheist" listed as an American Religion. Is "atheism" a religion?

[muriel_volestrangler]

15. The point it is the TV program, not the poll, that's wrong

(possibly Time was wrong too, but, having found the Morning Joe section online, I can see it's a graphic the TV program made)

It says it's the "U.S. Religious Landscape Survey", which is this - and the figures match the caption (though it should be noted that what the caption called 'atheist' was the combined 'atheist' and 'agnostic' answer; and both of those are part of the 'nones' category - it's 'atheist' 1.6%, 'agnostic' 2.4%, 'nothing in particular" 12.1%). The precise question was:

What is your present religion, if any? Are you Protestant, Roman Catholic, Mormon, Orthodox such as Greek or Russian Orthodox, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, atheist, agnostic, something else, or nothing in particular?”

So the 'if any' means they are not saying all the possible answers are religions.

[Joseph8th]

17. Right. Thank you.

In a nutshell:

Unless now Morning Joe gets to retroactively redo surveys using different models, we should go with the source. In which case, toss all those who identify as "None" in with the "atheist/agnostic" -- or vise versa. Point is, they belong in the same bag in this study.

Added up then, it's a good chunk of the US populace. Almost as many us now as there are that believe Jesus is coming this year! I guess that's reason for optimism.

[darkstar3]

18. kick