On Sun, Mar 21, 2004 at 10:50:38PM +0000, Richard Baker wrote:
> I don't know about that. Even so, I still don't think that would > disprove the Fool's assertion. In this case, There could be very > many smart people like Debbi indeed and still the atheists could in > principle all be all smarter than average.
True, if Debbie's sample is non-representative of the group as a whole, and skewed to the high side of the population. I guess I also assumed Debbie wouldn't pick a biased sample, so the average of the sample is a good estimate of the average of the population :-)
> (There's also an effect along these lines caused by relative sizes > of the atheist and non-atheist populations, which it seems to me is > skewed towards non-atheists in the US.)
Yes, I think atheists are less than 10% in America (much less, I think).
-- Erik Reuter
A Gullup poll indicates 3 - 10%. Another says 7%. A third (The American Religious Identification Survey 2001 was carried out under the auspices of the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and is considered a follow-up study of a 1990 census) had 8% in 1990 and 14.1% in 2002.
There is a political action committee, Godless Americans or GAMPAC.
http://godlessamericans.org/
Saw it on C-span; was going to call but another person asked the same questions I did, that American atheists and this group supported liberal and/or democratic (party) goals but a greater majority of atheists define themselves as conservative.
There was a similar discussion, that so many blacks supported conservative ideals, yet voted democrat.
Maybe I'll form SaCPAC.
Kevin T. - VRWC Single and childless
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