Re: [lbo-talk] Atheists identified as America’s mo st distrusted minority

[jthorn65 at sbcglobal.net]

> On 23 Mar 2006 at 15:42, Sean Johnson Andrews wrote:
> 
> > One question though:  The study cites 3% as the number of people who could 
> > be defined as atheists.  I seem to remember much larger numbers reported by 
> > people on this list (maybe as much as 30%).  Are they off in their 
> > measurements, defining it differently, or just less prone to exaggeration? 
> > Or maybe I'm misremembering.
> 
> 
> According to the American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) of 2001 15% of the US was in the 
> category of Agnostic/Atheist. I have no idea where this study got its 3%.

I'm going to respond to my own post to add that the 16% comes from including Agnostic/Atheist with No 
Religious Belief/Secular. On it's own Atheism accounted for less than 1% of the responses. Putting them 
together makes sense. What's the difference between No Religious Belief and Agnostic? I still don't know 
where the 3% comes from however.

John Thornton