I read an article that states that athiests are much more likely to believe in haunted houses, palm reading, alien visits, astrology and communicating with the dead than far-right Christians.
It has been my experience that it is the far right Christians that are always making a claim for the supernatural and it is the Athiests that claim there is no evidence for such things.
Do we have any Athiests here that believe in such things?
I'm wondering if the results got skewed because they included agnostics in with athiests.
What do you all think?
Here is the original article
A rational response to atheists - Opinions

I tend not to agree with your opening statement.

Why should an atheists, a person that, by definition, doesn't believe in god, a supernatural being, then be more likely to believe in other supernatural occurrences, doesn't really make a lot of sense, now does it?

Sounds like a mix up somewhere..

Yes when something doesn't sound right always go back to the original study, I should have know better.
Part of the original study below. Apparently they called athiests the no religion group so you were called an atheist even if you believe in a god.

Although nearly a third of the "no religion" group are atheists who reject "anything beyond the physical world," the Baylor Religion Survey found that two-thirds of the "no religion" group expressed some belief in God and many of those are not "irreligious" but are merely "unchurched" (Ch. 17, "The Irreligious: Simply Unchurched-Not Atheists"). Delving into the actual religiousness of those who report having no religion, the Baylor Survey found that a majority of Americans who claim to be irreligious pray (and 32 percent pray often), around a third of them profess belief in Satan, hell and demons, and around half believe in angels and ghosts.

That's were this breaks down.
Atheism isn't NO religion at all, but disbelief in the existence of a supreme being or beings, in this case god.

I think what they really mean here is agnostic:
agnostic definition |Dictionary.com

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Originally Posted by Curlyben

... Atheism isn't NO religion at all, but disbelief in the existence of a supreme being or beings, in this case god.

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Incorrect :

ATHEISM

A THEISM

A = No(t) or Without

THEISM = Belief in "God" or "Gods"

ATHEISM = No or Without Belief in "God" or "Gods"

Atheism is NOT (only) disbelief in the existence of a "supreme being or beings".
Most Atheists have NO opinion on the existence of a "supreme being or beings".
Only a few "Strong" Atheists do that. Most "Soft/Weak" Atheists simply ignore the possibility of existence of a "supreme being or beings", as there is no (OSE) proof for that religious claim.

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Agnosticism is about questioning the existence of a supreme being or beings, with the conclusion that nobody will ever know.

:rolleyes:

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The study was funded by the Templeton Foundation, whose purpose is to promote religion.

Further, the sample size was only about 1600 people. This seems like a very small number of people from which to draw conclusions about "all" Americans. Since the irreligious made up 11%? Of that, that'd be 176 people. A third of those are actual atheists? (I'm not looking up all the specific numbers from the Baylor press release (also not the actual data), but that least only two thirds as irreligious believers--118 people who are more likely to believe in the supernatural. And how much more? Doesn't seem surprising that unchurched believers would be open to all manner of hokum.

I'd also like to say that I am dubious about the claim of the Arizona student who says he is a student of evolution and ecology. I would question how much biology he knows if he thinks evolution is "magic." This is an opinion piece by a 20 year old Creationist who chooses to identify himself as a biologist.

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Originally Posted by asking

The study was funded by the Templeton Foundation, whose purpose is to promote religion.

Further, the sample size was only about 1600 people. This seems like a very small number of people from which to draw conclusions about "all" Americans. Since the irreligious made up 11%? of that, that'd be 176 people. A third of those are actual atheists? (I'm not looking up all the specific numbers from the Baylor press release (also not the actual data), but that least only two thirds as irreligious believers--118 people who are more likely to believe in the supernatural. And how much more? Doesn't seem surprising that unchurched believers would be open to all manner of hokum.

I'd also like to say that I am dubious about the claim of the Arizona student who says he is a student of evolution and ecology. I would question how much biology he knows if he thinks evolution is "magic." This is an opinion piece by a 20 year old Creationist who chooses to identify himself as a biologist.

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Apparently you did not read the article. Let me clarify it for you. I know that evolution is not "magic". It depends on natural selection, which is nonrandom, as well as a variety of random processes, such as mutation and genetic drift. The person I was referring to, who apparently did not even understand what natural selection was, DID believe in magic. She had a religious belief in evolution which was uninformed by any of the evidence and ideas which actually support the theory.

I am not a creationist or a Christian, and I accept the theory of evolution. I do not consider myself a biologist quite yet.

You can read the actual survey questions here:
http://www.isreligion.org/research/s...007_survey.pdf

Interestingly, there are a whole lot of questions about moral values, but the press release makes no mention of the results.

Where are the actual data??

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Originally Posted by Skage

I know that evolution is not "magic". It depends on natural selection, which is nonrandom, as well as a variety of random processes, such as mutation and genetic drift. The person I was referring to, who apparently did not even understand what natural selection was, DID believe in magic. She had a religious belief in evolution which was uninformed by any of the evidence and ideas which actually support the theory.

I am not a creationist or a Christian, and I accept the theory of evolution. I do not consider myself a biologist quite yet.

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Apologies. I withdraw my statement. I also agree that a lot of Americans accept evolution without taking the trouble to fully understand it. But then that's true of a lot of science and technology. I accept that engineers know how to build bridges (usually) and that Einstein was right about relatively, without really knowing how engineers do that or what the evidence for relativity is or even, truly, what it is.

And I still think your report was inaccurate in suggesting that atheists and irreligious believers (which are distinguished in the Baylor press release) are the same thing.

These are the only study results I can find (without buying the $25 book) and these don't shed any light on the question at hand. They do show that more conservative religions are less likely to express an opinion about the occult. The percentages of people who either believe in the occult or don't don't even add up to 50% in some cases, so large numbers of people either didn't answer or said they weren't sure (I guess). Atheists aren't listed at all. But liberal christians are more likely to give a yes or no answer.

http://www.baylor.edu/content/servic....php/72471.pdf

I found this article that goes into a little bit of detail but yea I'm not paying $25 for it.

Baylor University || Marketing & Communications || News

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Originally Posted by michealb

I read an article that states that athiests are much more likely to believe in haunted houses, palm reading, alien visits, astrology and communicating with the dead than far-right Christians.
It has been my experiance that it is the far right Christians that are always making a claim for the supernatural and it is the Athiests that claim there is no evidence for such things.
Do we have any Athiests here that believe in such things?
I'm wondering if the results got skewed because they included agnostics in with athiests.
What do you all think?

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As there is no direct information how Taylor Kessinger got to his/her data, there is little to say about it. So let's focus on the lack of logic in the article's claim :

As Atheism means having no (or being without) belief in "God" or "Gods", why would people who reject (or ignore) supra-natural entities to exist reject one set of supra-natural entities (God, Jesus, Angles, Heaven, Hell, Afterlife, etc.), and replace that with another set of supra-natural entities (spirits, haunted houses, palm reading, alien visits, astrology and communicating with the dead)??

Such a suggestion makes no sense. It is a nonsensical claim that is suggested by people who tend to believe in God/Gods themselves.
As active member in the Secular Humanist Organisation I know many thousands of Atheists (of all different directions), but hardly anyone of these ever showed any interest in supra-natural entities as suggested by the article in your topic.

Actually : people who believe in haunted houses, palm reading, alien visits, astrology and communicating with the dead are all theists.
And the majority of these theists in the Western World are Christians, representing the biggest group of people who daily check their horoscopes to see what the day will bring them...

:)

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There are people out there with a vested interest in religion, I would think, who put out propaganda about atheists.

Incidentally, one of the untruths that Christians like to circulate about atheists is that they have an inferior morality than Christians. They just made that up! American atheists and secular humanists are highly principled people for the most part, in my opinion, from readings.

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Originally Posted by Choux

There are people out there with a vested interest in religion, I would think, who put out propaganda about atheists.

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How true, Mary Sue ! About and against Atheists, that is ! :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Choux

Incidently, one of the untruths that Christians like to circulate about atheists is that they have an inferior morality than Christians. They just made that up!! American atheists and secular humanists are highly principled people for the most part, in my opinion, from readings.

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Indeed. As student I was involved in the network here that provided sexual education and means to prevent females to fall pregnant. Most youths there were christians, who did not receive any sexual education at home, and who could not even speak about that at home.
And as most youth from a secular upbringing got that education at home, we hardly saw any of them at the cliniques.

I recall the situation in Africa, at places where the orthodox and conservative Christian churches were situated near the borders of foreign (or "homeland") countries.
After Sunday church the males went to the pub across the street to move some hours later to the nearest brothel across the borders...

I should have posted that last example in the topic about "Christian integrity" ! :D

:rolleyes:

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