It’s difficult to determine what percentage of the Americans have no particular religious affiliation.  The figure ranges from a low of 15% to a high of 37%.  If we have to pinpoint one number, the commonly accepted figure is 20%.

We might tend to feel that the preponderance of the unaffiliated are atheists or agnostics.  However, that is not true.  In a recent poll conducted by the Pew Research Religion & Public Life Project, fully 70% of the unaffiliated simply say that they have “no particular religious affiliation” rather than being avowed atheists or agnostics.  The figure for atheists is 2.4% and for agnostics, 3.3% of all people.

It’s rather remarkable how much noise a relatively small band of acknowledged atheists and agnostics can create.  The noise does not emanate from the atheists and agnostics. They tend to quietly go about their business.  Occasionally they seek legal help such as when asking Congress to eliminate the “under God” provision in the Pledge of Allegiance.  The noise tends to come from the right wing and religious fundamentalists who take particular affront to someone who is not a believer in their God.

Fox News pundit Dana Perino said she’s “tired” of atheists attempting to remove the phrase “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance, adding, “if these people really don’t like it, they don’t have to live here.”  That’s about as harsh as it gets when a group of American citizens merely want to express their freedom of speech as guaranteed in the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.

One of the most interesting dynamics in religion is the large number of people who become dissatisfied with their religion and then stay with their religion anyway, sometimes trying to change it.  Others find another religion that suits them.  The remaining individuals drop out of the religious “universe” or become atheists or agnostics.

Many Catholics have a difficult time disengaging from their religion.  Because there are so many rules and regulations in the church that are hundreds or thousands of years old, modern Catholics have a huge range of issues that they’d like re-examined.  These include priesthood for women, equal rights for those in the LGBT community, accepting pre-marital sex, and removing the vows of abstinence for priests and nuns.  Most “lapsed Catholics” say that these rules just don’t make sense in the modern world.  However many prefer to fight from within to get the rules changed rather than just putting the church behind them and entering another church, becoming non-affiliated, or becoming an atheist or agnostic.

Moving away from the church is also happening in the far-right fundamentalist churches.  In a recent article on CNN on-line, Rachel Held Evans discusses many of the modern but largely unsuccessful ways of bringing young people back into the fundamentalist churches.  She says:

Time and again, the assumption among Christian leaders, and evangelical leaders in particular, is that the key to drawing twenty-somethings back to church is simply to make a few style updates – edgier music, more casual services, a coffee shop in the fellowship hall, a pastor who wears skinny jeans, an updated Web site that includes online giving.

Discussing Millenials and herself, Ms. Evans says:

Many of us, myself included, are finding ourselves increasingly drawn to high church traditions – Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, the Episcopal Church, etc. – precisely because the ancient forms of liturgy seem so unpretentious, so unconcerned with being “cool,” and we find that refreshingly authentic.

What millennials really want from the church is not a change in style but a change in substance.

Many secular humanists tend to believe that it’s either religion or their way.  That’s because seculars tend to believe that all religions share many of the same flaw: incomprehensible stories, rules, and regulations.  Why wouldn’t someone want to leave an organized religion for the freedom of being unaffiliated?  The fact is that most who leave a religion find another one to their liking.  It is indeed a very special person who chooses to be unaffiliated, an atheist, or an agnostic.

The post Do atheists prefer to not be affiliated, or not to believe in God appeared first on Occasional Planet.

As a non-Catholic, I am a partial owner of the Pope’s institution, the Catholic Church. You see, in the country where I live, the United States, and many other countries as well, the Church receives enormous tax breaks because it is considered to be a non-for-profit organization. So in order for governments to try to raise sufficient revenue to cover their expenses, each of us must pay additional taxes to make up for the shortfall that occurs as a result of the tax breaks given to the Catholic church, as well as many other religious organizations.

In the United States, and certainly in other countries, the changing of the guard for a Pope is treated by the mainstream media as a story of universal interest. It may be because the Catholic Church is one of the largest religious denominations in the country, because it is rich in history and pageantry, and because it mandates positions on numerous public issues, positions that those in its flock may or may not choose to follow.

When a new Pope is chosen, mainstream media interviews countless Catholics. The interviewees may be “ordinary Catholics,” priests, nuns, bishops, arch-bishops, or cardinals. Invariably they express their joy over the selection of the new titular head of the Church and send their best wishes and prayers.

But what about those of us in the three-quarters of the U.S. population who are not Catholic? Is the media at all interested in what we have to say? Apparently not, because we seem to never be interviewed. Yet we have thoughts about the Pope, and quite frankly it is important for others to hear what we have to say. Many of us think that the postulates of the Catholic Church are not particularly fact-laden, and the stories that form the basis of its theology seem a bit out of science fiction.

So just to go on the record, I’m going to interview myself about what I think of the selection of Pope Francis.

Q:           What do you think of the election of Pope Francis?

A:           He looks younger than his age. Perhaps he’s more attuned to the world as it is in 2013 than how it was two millennia ago.

Q:           Is there anything that he has said or done that particularly impresses you?

A:           Yes. He’s expressed a real commitment to helping the world’s poor and he is comfortable living a modest lifestyle. If there was a person named Jesus and he truly cared for the poor, then Pope Francis is a good spokesperson. I don’t get the thing about washing other people’s feet, but if you’re going to do it, then the fact that he included women, one of whom is a Muslim, reveals a true sense of fairness. I know that pissed off some of his conservative followers, but that just seems to make it more impressive.

Q:           What about the fact that he is ardently opposed to a woman’s right to choose and has said nothing in support of LGBT rights?

A:           He’s the. pope. There’s only so much that we can hope to get from him.

Q:           You purport to be an agnostic. Through that lens, how do you feel about the pope?

A:           To me the Catholic Church has always been a curiosity. Like other religions,  Catholicism seems to have some very peculiar beliefs and rituals. It strikes me that its connection with reason and logic is primarily coincidental. I don’t understand why those who want to reform the Church don’t simply leave and either join another religious community where they are comfortable, start their own religion, or bag religion altogether.

Q:           Um, I think that I’m going to have to stop this interview; your most recent pronouncements are so out of touch with the beliefs of our mainstream audience that I have to pull the plug.

I’m truly sorry that the mainstream media has such an aversion to hearing from non-religious people about religious, or better yet, spiritual, matters. If agnostics and atheists received more coverage, perhaps we could provide some needed fresh perspectives to our collective body of knowledge. And perhaps we could provide some laughs for Catholics and other seriously religious people. I don’t know this pope, but I think that he might have to get a new set of friends to have some good laughs.

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