Study Shows That Young ‘Nones’ Are Not Just Spiritual Seekers

[SecularMotion]

According to a new report by researchers Barry A. Kosmin & Ariela Keysar, nearly 30% of college students are “Secular” (as opposed to “Religious” or “Spiritual”).

The report is part of the American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) series from Trinity College and was produced in conjunction with the Center for Inquiry.

The biggest finding may be that, among the students who identified as “Secular,” more than 80% didn’t identify with any religion. Neither did more than 40% of the “Spiritual” crowd.

We know that “Nones” are on the rise but the common wisdom has been that a lot of those young people aren’t really atheists. They’re more like “spiritual-but-not-religious.” Not so, says this study:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/09/27/study-shows-that-young-nones-are-not-just-spiritual-seekers/

[longship]

1. Well, people generally do not like the atheist tag.

It has been demonized -- often literally -- for a long time. So people generally adopt alternative labels. Many of these surveys apparently do not make that distinction. I believe that by splitting non-believers into multiple labels (like spiritual, agnostic, atheist, etc.) inevitably understates the fact that it's likely that none of them believe in the gods of any religion and in fact eschew anything remotely resembling religious belief. Under any rational characterization they could all be called atheists, those not adhering to a theistic belief.

But then, non-believers wouldn't have that to argue amongst themselves about.


In the end, the accuracy of these surveys depend on how the questions are worded. I find the descriptor "spiritual" to be particularly troubling because there's no definition of what it actually means. I'm sure we could all get into a rip roaring argument about that term alone.

[SecularMotion]

2. I prefer non-believer myself.

Though I don't think you'll find as many arguments among different degrees of non-belief as you do among the different religions of believers.

[longship]

3. Granted. Good point.

Non-believers don't tend to kill one another over their labels.

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. They didn't use 'atheist' or 'agnostic' in the questions, though 1 question did touch on the subject

It was a choice for "What do you believe about God?" (Table 3) and the results for those who call themselves 'secular' (which is 28.2% of the sample - others called themselves 31.8% 'religious', 32.4% 'spiritual', 7.7% don't know):

I don’t believe in God 41.7%
I don’t know whether there is a God and I don’t believe there is any way to find out 35.2%
I don’t believe in a personal God, but I do believe in a higher power 10.8%
...

I think it's reasonable to call the first group 'atheist', and the second 'agnostic'. It's tougher to put the 3rd group into either of those terms, or 'depends ...', or 'neither'.

For all the results, I think it's worth remembering this is college students, not 'young people' in general.

[longship]

6. Yes, I got that.

My point is that the wording of the questions is very important. One doesn't have to ask about atheism to muddle the survey. One could also ask about "spirituality".

I trust CFI to do the right thing here and to avoid such complications. But I want to see how this study pans out before I pass judgement. It looks good, so far. Unbelievers number much more than people think. I've known that for a long time. It's only become so very important recently (two decades or so) since the GOP went off on the Christian Fundie tack. They're crazy.

[cbayer]

4. Pretty good preliminary data.

They unfortunately didn't do any statistical analysis, so it's hard to measure the significance of these results.

I would also wonder how these numbers differ from past surveys in this age group.

There's also that oddity that he notes in this graph. Who are these people, indeed?

[muriel_volestrangler]

7. Of the 'secular', 11% believe in a 'higher power', 6% believe in God but have doubts,

3% believe at times but not at others, and 1% are certain there's a God. So, between those, you can cobble together 13% to believe in miracles, karma etc. It would be possible to believe in ghosts, life after death or reincarnation without any belief in a god or higher power (if you think that whatever judges 'karma' is extremely impersonal, you might even believe in it, but not in a 'higher power', I suppose).

[LostOne4Ever]

8. Well

Secular means without religion. Technically one can be a theist and be secular. Though, usually people have a tendency to use the word secular as a synonym for the word Skeptic.

Not a one of those things on their own does a religion make.