In your own headline, why do you categorize all "nonreligious" or "unaffliated" people as atheists?

I'd be curious to know whether the group is actually growing, or if people are now more willing to report their non-affiliation. Probably at least a little of both, but if it's more the latter, it takes some of the wind out of the survey.

If the NY study is the one I'm thinking of (and it may not be from the info provided), many of the unaffiliated report praying daily, others many times a week. Some attend worship services regularly.

Also, the General Social Survey data for years has shown that many atheists pray frequently.

Secularization as the decline of "religion" has been falsified. Secularization as declining "religious authority" is growing.

Atheists forthrightly affirm that there is no God

Umm, no they don't. While you may be able to find some people who label themselves as atheists and who assert that there is no God, atheism is not the positive denial of God. It is simply the disbelief of God.

The difference is significant. I do not believe there is a gold-plated Ferrari in my driveway, I am a driveway-resident gold-plated Ferrari atheist.

But if you tell me there is one, I'm not going to dogmatically deny it. I'll get up and go take a look. If I don't see it in the driveway, I'll continue to be a gold-plated Ferrari atheist.

Atheism is simply the unbelief, the unfaith, in something. Every human being is born an atheist.

And some of us stay that way.

greg

what's that line about lies, damn lies, and statistics?
a lot of unaffiliated people are merely spiritual...

and, of course, when one uses the term "fastest growing", it is a real lie...if 2 million people become Catholics, since there are 40 million catholics, it is a small increase. If one million people become Muslim, and there are five million Muslims, it would be a "faster growing" church...

At the risk of prompting more debate on an issue that probably doesn't deserve it, the description of "atheism" as "affirm[ing] that there is no God" comes from the word itself: a-theism, from the Greek; "a" meaning "no" or "not" and "theo", meaning God. The word "agnostic" means not knowing and has been used to refer to those who don't necessarily believe that there is no God, only that He is not knowable (again from the Greek: "a" meaning "not" and -gnosis, knowing or knowledge).

Whether those who consider themselves to be atheistic or agnostic know what the words mean isn't really relevant, anymore than someone's calling himself or herself a Christian means that they really are.

The word "Christian" was first used to refer to followers of Christ in Antioch (cf. Acts 11:26). It has been since used to differentiate Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and other similar religions from those based on the Old and New Testament (whether Catholic or Protestant).

The real test is what the person believes; the identifier is based on the identification of the belief system. Thus, whether someone believes himself to be an atheist or not, if he is not sure whether God exists (or doesn't care), but he doesn't believe that if God exists He is knowable in any meaningful way, then technically, that person is an agnostic.

It's actually pretty hard to be a bona fide atheist, since the declaration that there is no God requires substantially more knowledge than anyone making such a claim possesses; so, definitionally, most people who claim to be atheists are actually agnostics in practice.....

With all due respect to Greg, the only way you would be "a driveway-resident gold-plated Ferrari atheist" is if you also believed that a driveway-resident gold-plated Ferrari was God.... (which may be true.....) ;)

I believe that lc is correct on the "atheism"/"agnosticism" question. But I don't see how atheism is worse off evidentially than many theisms that are quite robustly represented on the planet, so I don't quite see why we would expect this to be true: "It's actually pretty hard to be a bona fide atheist, since the declaration that there is no God requires substantially more knowledge than anyone making such a claim possesses".

The point is that in order to categorically affirm that there is no God, you would have to know ... everything. The reality of the position is that while no one can know everything, based on what one knows, one does not see any evidence that a God exists, which is (definitionally, anyway) agnosticism, rather than atheism.

Just by way of follow-up, Kai Nielsen said: "To show that an argument is invalid or unsound is not to show that the conclusion of the argument is false....All the proofs of God’s existence may fail, but it still may be the case that God exists."

Logically, in the absence of evidence for God’s existence, agnosticism, not atheism, is the logical presumption. Even if arguments for God’s existence do not persuade an individual that He does exist, atheism should not be presumed because atheism is not neutral; pure agnosticism is. Atheism is justified only if there is sufficient evidence against God’s existence.

An atheist assumes that if one has no evidence for God’s existence, then one is obligated to believe that God does not exist — whether or not one has evidence against God’s existence. The problem with such a position is that atheism is just as much a claim to know something ("God does not exist") as theism ("God exists"). Therefore, the atheist’s denial of God’s existence needs just as much substantiation as does the theist’s claim; the atheist must give plausible reasons for rejecting God’s existence.

lc, you've just _got_ to get yourself unmuddled about evidence vs. proof. You've totally messed this up in the past (in the context of arguments about ID), and you're still badly confused about it. One can evidence for something, even extremely good evidence for it, without having proof of it. Indeed, we have proof of only the scantiest few claims outside of math & logic. But one could, without needing to be omniscient, have good evidence that God doesn't exist, just as one can do similarly with such claims as Santa Claus doesn't exist, or a currently-living person who can run a mile in 47 seconds doesn't exist, or a magnetic monopole doesn't exist, or what have you. Evidence does not require proof, and neither does knowledge (which does, however, require at least a modicum of evidence). To deny this you'd need to deny, for example, that we know there's no tooth fairy, or that we know that there's no element lighter than hydrogen, and so on.

And the text you quoted defends the claim that atheism has the same initial burden of proof that theism has. But you're claiming something much, much harder to defend than that, and indeed, the text is more consistent with the view I'm defending than with the one you are! So, you seem to have committed something of a blogospheric version of an 'own goal' here.

"Evidence does not require proof, and neither does knowledge (which does, however, require at least a modicum of evidence)."

Although it is true that evidence can sometimes constitute proof, evidence DOES require authentication and support; otherwise, one could manufacture anything, slap a label on it and call it "evidence" without establishing its validity. Knowledge similarly requires a basis in fact.

I suppose I should be flattered that you read enough of my comments to form an opinion about my ability to reason and discuss logic, but instead, I'm just saddened that you find it necessary to assert your own superiority by attacking me instead of just allowing for the possibility that I might be right.

If I were the lone voice crying in the wilderness, it would be one thing, but the fact remains that there are many other learned and credentialled people who share my opinions, and that apparently is so troubling to you that you find it necessary to discount me as a person. Sorry you feel that way.