Pew: 6% Percent of Atheists and Agnostics Pray Every Day

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Weird stuff.

I can see agnostics who pray, because remember agnosticism isn’t about one’s belief or lack of belief in a god but his or her certainty in that belief.

But for atheists…? Maybe they are in househoulds that regularly pray, where it’s people married to christians or have parents who are christians. I don’t know, I’m just spitballing here. I’m as stumped as you 🙂
 
reminds me of the classic definition of agnostic:

'swears there aint no heaven and prays there aint a no hell"
 
tampa dave said:
:eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: Yes indeed, to whom do they genuflect and pray? Obama? He claimed he had the power to make the skies bluer and the oceans recede during his presidency. That’s godlike, isn’t it?
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hahahahahahahahahaha!!!
 
Tampa_Dave said:
:eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: Yes indeed, to whom do they genuflect and pray? Obama? He claimed he had the power to make the skies bluer and the oceans recede during his presidency. That’s godlike, isn’t it?
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:rotfl: That’s funny. Thanks for the laugh.
 
Don’t think the poll is all that reliable. As reported, it the atheists are lumped in with the agnostics. Not really a contradiction for an agnostic to pray, they’re just not sure.🤷
Now if there were solid figures for atheists alone, this would be more interesting.
An atheist praying is definitely a hypocrite .
 
Oh, it gets even weirder, my friends. An earlier Pew Poll in 2008 found that 21% of self-identified atheists believe in God, 12% believe in Heaven, and 10% of atheists pray at least once a week - pray, not meditate, as that was covered in a separate poll question.

:confused:

Here’s the 2008 report: religions.pewforum.org/pdf/report2religious-landscape-study-key-findings.pdf

And yes, they break those unaffiliated with a faith down by atheist, agnostic, secular unaffiliated, and religious unaffiliated. Those stats don’t include the agnostic.

What does it all mean?

🤷

I can think of several possibilities:
  1. The Inigo Montoya Paradox: A large percentage of people who self-identify as “atheist” because they think it makes them sound trendy and rebellious actually have no idea what the word actually means.
  2. Atheists are hedging their bets, and pay a whole lot more credence to Pascal’s Wager than they publicly admit, but still feel obliged to tell the truth to a pollster.
  3. A Philosophical False Flag Operation: My father-in-law so loathes the Democratic Party that he will always tell a pollster that he is a Democrat, then take the craziest, most bizarre stances on any question he is asked, to try to skew the poll (“Yes, I do believe city taxes should be used to hire ex-Soviet mercenaries to bayonet puppies.”). Maybe a large proportion of people are doing that to make atheists sound even more contradictory than they are.
 
Maybe they were just being ironic, as the kids say.

Then too, people always tell the truth on surveys.
 
I think that the percentage is much too low…God dammit is a prayer isn’t it?
What percentage of atheists and agnostics say that prayer do you think?

Peace
James
 
Perhaps they are dyslexic atheists, who don’t believe in Dog.
 
Mike_from_NJ said:
Weird stuff.

I can see agnostics who pray, because remember agnosticism isn’t about one’s belief or lack of belief in a god but his or her certainty in that belief.

But for atheists…? Maybe they are in househoulds that regularly pray, where it’s people married to christians or have parents who are christians. I don’t know, I’m just spitballing here. I’m as stumped as you 🙂
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I am retired and have the time to read a large variety of publications including “atheistic” works by Dawkins and Hitchens. It has been my observation that the “atheistic” publications I have read do not argue the nonexistence of God, which is what I believe "atheist’ means; rather they attack religious institutions. Hitchen’s “God is not Great” is an example. Dawkins attacks such things as the plausibility of the Bible story of creation. But, neither argues flat out that there is no God. So, my conclusion is that many atheists are not disbelievers in a God, but are simply people who reject organized religion. This is why there in no inconsistency that these so called atheists pray.
 
OriginalJS said:
I am retired and have the time to read a large variety of publications including “atheistic” works by Dawkins and Hitchens. It has been my observation that the “atheistic” publications I have read do not argue the nonexistence of God, which is what I believe "atheist’ means; rather they attack religious institutions. Hitchen’s “God is not Great” is an example. Dawkins attacks such things as the plausibility of the Bible story of creation. But, neither argues flat out that there is no God. So, my conclusion is that many atheists are not disbelievers in a God, but are simply people who reject organized religion. This is why there in no inconsistency that these so called atheists pray.
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But then these so called atheists are not atheists at all, simply people of no religious affiliation. But then also from my understanding they would say that if God is as believers claim Him to be then He is unworthy of worship or something. You could say they don’t believe in God in the sense that they would not worship or follow Him if He does exist.
 
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OriginalJS:
Hitchen’s “God is not Great” is an example. Dawkins attacks such things as the plausibility of the Bible story of creation. But, neither argues flat out that there is no God. So, my conclusion is that many atheists are not disbelievers in a God, but are simply people who reject organized religion. This is why there in no inconsistency that these so called atheists pray.
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But the point of “God Is Not Great” was specifically to argue the faults of religious institutions. It wasn’t meant to be the be-all end-all guide to atheism.

If a group has a position for A and B, and someone in that group writes just about A, that doesn’t mean they’ve either given up or changed their position on B.

That would make as much sense as if Archbishop Dolan wrote about the moral implications of abortion, then someone assumed he no longer held to the truth of transubstantiation because he didn’t include it in that writing.
 
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