Survey Results: Are Scientists More Likely To Be Atheists Than Non-Scientists?

As promised, although later than I had hoped, here are the results of my survey into whether scientists are more likely to be atheists than non-scientists. A big thank you to everyone who took part.

We had 16 people respond of which 11 were scientists and 5 were non-scientists.

Out of the scientists; 5 were atheists, 3 were religious and 3 were spiritual.

Scientists

Out of the non-scientists;  4 were atheists and 1 was spiritual.

Non-scientists

This means that out of my very small sample size, atheists were more likely to be non-scientists than scientists.

I then also looked on the effect of growing up in a religious household on people’s religious beliefs.

Of the 16 people who responded; 10 grew up in religious households whilst 6 grew up in non-religious households.

Out of those who grew up in religious households; 6 were atheists, 2 were religious and 2 were spiritual.

Religious Households

Out of those who grew up in non-religious households; 3 were atheists, 1 was religious and 2 were spiritual.

Non-Religious Households

Therefore from my sample, those who grew up in religious households were slightly more likely to be atheists than those who grew up in non-religious households.

Due to the small sample size, we can’t make any generalisations about society at large, but still it is very interesting to find out amongst my readers their religious views and if they were affected by the type of religious experiences they had as children.  I must admit that I was a little shocked to see more atheists amongst my non-scientific readers than my scientific readers though.  However, I think that is because my blog attracts way more atheist readers than non-atheists due to my rather outspoken views on religion.

If you are a new reader and want to take part in the survey,  I have placed it up on Survey Monkey.  It will be interesting to see if a larger sample size has any effect on the overall results.

Women & Atheism

In the past 24 hours, three prominent atheist bloggers (PZ Myers, Greta Christina & Jen McCreight) have asked; where are all the women?

It is a pretty good question.  When you scan the writers of atheist blogs and those who comment on them, the overwhelming majority are men.  Jen, who writes the feminist atheist blog Blag Hag, recently did a survey of her readers and found that 75% of them are male.  Now this is a blog you would think more women than men would be reading.  Then again, Jen is kinda cute so maybe that is what all the guys are doing there.

Joking aside, the lack of women in the atheist movement is worrying.  What are atheists doing wrong that women don’t feel comfortable joining the movement?  I really don’t think it is because considerably more men than women identify as atheist.  To me (and this is just my personal opinion) atheism can be a very feminist viewpoint.  The majority of religions relegate women to the role of baby makers and slave of the husband.  Some religions have tried to move with the times promoting women to higher positions of power, but these moves have met with an awful lots of resistance resulting in the splintering of some religious groups.  To come out and free yourself of this mindset and the notion that a mythical being would see you as a second class citizen is a very loud and proud feminist statement, yet few women seem to be making it.

Could it be that the most well-known atheists (Richard Dawkins & Christopher Hitchens) come across as angry men and women are turned off by this?  That is very possible.  I find yelling at people about their religious beliefs not very attractive and initially that is what I thought the atheist movement was.  That is just not me nor what I am about which is why I avoided the atheist movement for many years.   I’m fine with people believing what they want to, it’s their right.  It is when their beliefs negatively affects laws, scientific advancement and technology that I start having a huge problem with religion and I am none too quiet about that.

Perhaps the Atheist movement needs a facelift, needs more “moderates” to come out and express their views to start attracting women to it.  This is not saying that some women don’t appreciate a good yelling, but I’m guessing that they are already here.  We really need to make atheism appeal to those women who move more quietly through life but still want to tell people that there is another way to live their lives free of the stranglehold of religion.  I’m just not really sure how to go about doing that.

Belief & Science

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal has done a wonderful graph correlating belief in a higher power with scientific education.

It also provides a great way to remind you all that I am still conducting my survey into whether scientists are more likely to be atheists than non-scientists and the affect on belief of growing up in a religious household.  If you haven’t taken part, please do.

Top Ten Creationist Arguments (& How To Disprove Them)

I have been searching for some time for a concise way to discredit some of the arguments out there about why creation theory is correct and evolutionary theory is not.  Sure, I could write a nice long essay about it, but very few people would bother to read it and long essays really are not memorable.

Fortunately, the Thinking Atheist has come to the rescue with a fantastic video that discredits the top ten creationist arguments.  It is short, concise but is packed full of information.  Also, it looks pretty damn professional as well.

If you ever need to debate a creationist feel free to grab this video.