This one is for the godless among us: a survey on Coming Out as an Atheist. It’s a little longer than the previous one, I’m afraid.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
This one is for the godless among us: a survey on Coming Out as an Atheist. It’s a little longer than the previous one, I’m afraid.
I find it interesting that I have to continually profess my heterosexuality in the survy… there could be some way of designing that question set better. Otherwise not bad. Does it seem to anyone else that part of the point is to compare the stigma associated with admitting atheism to that of admitting homosexuality? The questions seemed to lead that way to me.
More like five minutes…
The last page has made me stop and wonder. How come it is easier for me to come out as a transgender bisexual than an Atheist?
Wish I could answer that for myself. Most people think I must have some belief in a higher power to keep going with the other discrimination I receive.
@1 I didn’t feel that way. I’m guessing the survey required an answer to every question, so they have a “I am a heterosexual” option as a choice for a couple of those questions. That’s just a guess, though. You might be right.
It didn’t have an option to select either Libertarian or independant, so I did not complete the survey. It’s not possible to answer the question how it is worded.
Pigeonholed from the start. What a shame.
I am in an odd position taking these surveys. My wife is very religious and I am an agnostic atheist (which is a cause of endless strife). These types of surveys always ask how important “faith” is in my life. For me, it is HUGELY important but only in negative way. There is rarely a way to convey this in a survey.
A friend of mine, now sadly no more, told me he found it less difficult to come out as gay or as HIV-positive than as not interested in music. (Coming out as an atheist wasn’t a problem for him as he came from an atheist family and had mostly atheist friends.)
There is a question with 3 choices all involving not being religious…there is no option for being in a non-theistic religion.
The survey author assumed everyone either votes mostly Republican, mostly Democratic, or a mixture of Republican, Democratic and Independent. Some of us vote for independents because we’re outside of the narrow Democrat-Republican spectrum, not wishy-washy between the two groups. I’d expect this is reasonably common among internet atheist poll respondents.
My best friend has a serious (though nonfatal) disease that has left him somewhat incapacitated. He was always a little religious, but now he is more so. I’ve never expressly told him I’m an atheist, and now I really don’t have the heart to tell him–even when he sends me religion-related emails. I’m not sure if that’s right or wrong (or neither). Beyond that one thing, he and I are as close as we can possibly be.
Wow, cmotdibbler, I feel really sorry for you. Obviously it was not enough of a problem that it would prevent you from being married. By “very religious” do you mean she says grace at the dinner table but otherwise leaves you out of her delusion, drags you off to church every Sunday and insists your kids are raised religious (if you have any), or rolls around on the floor speaking in tongues and handles snakes?
How do you cope?
It definitely needs more options for the political affiliations section – I don’t care what you think in the US, socialism is not the same as extreme liberalism.
Nick Gotts:
I am sorry to hear about your friend.
The only thing I feel difficult to come out about is apathy towards sports. It seems that males in the United States are only allowed to choose a few sports to be apathetic to, not all of them.
They need a comments/none of the above section in every category. For example, I was (probably excessively) annoyed that I couldn’t give the real answer to when I knew I was an atheist: the actual answer is age 8 (when I started examining the evidence for a god–the Bible, the historical Jesus, near death experiences–and found it lacking). The nearest option was adolescence. Don’t the people who made the survey think that children can think critically, examine evidence, and change their minds based on the evidence? Apparently not.
Anyone have any idea what a ‘spiritual person’ is?
Apart from that, not too bad.
I like that they asked how important coming out as an atheist was to my love life. I met my husband at a local atheist meet-up (Orlando). We tied the knot on the Autumnal equinox and will have a secular ceremony and party with our families on the Vernal equinox ’09. :o)
There was also the supernatural thing- If something extraordinary that we’ve never seen before happens, it may be described as supernatural, but if it’s eventually understood by science- it’s no longer supernatural.
Steve Rumney, In the U.S. it kind of does. You have to remember that the concepts of “conservative” and “liberal” are relative. Conservative ideals are that things stay as they are, or revert to a position held in the past. Liberal ideals are that things will change from how they are now. This, of course, is going to mean something different to other nations. If your country is extremely conservative (compared to the U.S.) then your idea of extremely liberal might be just about break even with how things are in the U.S.
Perhaps you mean to say that you are “extremely” liberal on social policies but only somewhat on economic policy? If you consider yourself “extremely” liberal on economic policy then you probably have more in common with socialists than you think.
The political spectrum is not black and white. There are all kinds of shades of gray.
Not a good survey. Too many questions about “coming out” – as a “whatever”. Too few choices in many questions. No choice for “Yellow Dog Democrat” (ALL Rethugicans are evil).
Interesting – I did find the “coming out” questions a little hard to answer, as I decided I was agnostic as a child. (Maybe I was stupid, but until I had it spelled out to me, I really thought that religions were ethnicities, or just the set of customs that were traditional to a family, but that anything adults told me about the behaviour and properties of gods must be objective truth.) I almost never talk about my lack of belief, but it’s never been a secret.
I am sorry to hear about your friend.
The only thing I feel difficult to come out about is apathy towards sports. – anonymous coward
Thanks – it’s an old wound (he died at 41 in 1996, just before HAART became available), but I still miss him a lot – apart from my wife, he was my closest friend. Though at least I don’t have that “Why him?” question bugging me: he was a highly promiscuous bisexual who spent most of his professional life in Africa during the period AIDS was spreading but unknown to science, and also a very heavy smoker (50-60 a day) and fairly heavy drinker, so the question was rather, “How the hell did he last so long?”!
I feel as you do about sports – though I must say I rather relish telling people (OK, it’s always men) who try to start a soccer conversation that I neither know nor care who is likely to win the Premier League.
@21 Just always answer with Manchester United. I find that works.
The survey forced me to give several highly inaccurate responses. Public displays of religion never make me “uncomfortable,” which I associate with embarrassment or foot-shifting unease. They piss me off, which is different. And by far the hardest people for me to “come out to” were my children, especially my daughter, and that wasn’t an option. They were tween and pre-tween when I told them. They were used to me being an evangelical Christian (I didn’t come out until I was certain I had been mistaken as a Christian), and their mom still is. That was by far the most difficult and tearful conversation I’ve ever had about my atheism, and it wasn’t even listed. That did not make me oh-so-very Happy Monkey.
@Nock Gotts – #21
My husband derives the same joy from asking “what game” when people ask if he’s watching “the game” and it should be obvious to him to what they’re referring.
Odd how there was no option for
o I regard the Bible and other ‘Holy’ book as a dangerous load of shite.
The survey also assumes that I had to have some difficulty ‘coming out’ as an atheist. Aren’t we allowed to be proud of it?
Weird. Having grown up in California, there was no “coming out”. You just said, “Nah, I don’t believe in that crap!” and that was that.
You learned to roll your eyes alot at the crystal gazers, of course…
As a child I felt that the bible was just another book of fairy tales. It wasn’t until I was in my teens that I found out people actually believed that stuff.
As for the whole “coming out as an atheist” thing, if asked I’ll say that I’m an atheist, but it’s not something I normally bring up. I don’t care what people’s religious beliefs are so long as I’m not affected.
There’s no way to really encompass everyone in these, either politically or socially. For instance I’m equally open about being an atheist and a lesbian (everyone who knows or works with me knows both). What I’m a lot less out about is being a transwoman as it doesn’t come up unless you’re going to be having sex with me (cudos for them including trans).
Didn’t we see this survey, or one very similar, as part of a study some time back? I remember a lot of these same issues with the design/assumptions coming up before.
@anonymous coward #13
Interesting. I’ve never even pretended to be interested in most sporting efforts, especially those team/contact sports that flood the TV every weekend. Boring. Individual skill and athleticism is okay (gymnastics, skating, X-games, etc.). If they ever come up with Olympic Team Competition for two-handed knitting, of course, I’ll be in the front row, and would sponsor the U.S.A. team.
Personally, I have no idea, but I know a lot of people who are very skeptical but they are ‘spiritual’ so they won’t put the label atheist on themselves. *shrugs*
Yeah same beef with others, the answers weren’t the best. Questions such as who was the first person you came out to, hardest person, “parents” was grouped. As if everyone is still married and they collaborate everything? Otherwise, something I read this morning brought back some sweltering bad memories about my mom spreading deformation to my character rumors. I got to rant about that on one of the type in questions. I felt better after that.
blah
baa. horrible survey. what the world needs is another confined regulated identity shoved down it’s throat – not. Perhaps it is necessary to distinguish between Capital-A Atheists who need to tell you what to believe and small-a freethinkers, humanists, objectivists, rationalists (the latter choices notably lacking in the survey) who simply answer the question “is there a central planning department in the sky where you have a help desk account” with “no”.
perhaps all the normative, Manichean, Capital A’s and Capital C’s can go somewhere and fight it out. And let the rest of us get on with our happy utilitarian lives.
A lot of it depend where you live. When I was in Oklahoma, the social stigma was incredible – when I moved back to Wisconsin, it doesn’t seem like such a big deal.
A number of the questions didn’t really fit. My grandmother was a devout Catholic (lost that along with the rest of her memory) and my dad went to Catholic school through 8th grade. We grew up rather without religion except when my grandmother would take us to church (classic Creaster). It didn’t not believe but I didn’t really believe either; we were sort of apathetic to religion. Not so much a “coming out” as it was simply losing any minor ties I ever had to religion.
My dad’s classic response to it was that he grew up Catholic and wouldn’t force that upon any of his kids.
I also struggled with some of it and had to leave some questions unanswered. When it comes to politics I consider myself to be an apolitical pragmatist. Why would it not occur to them that an atheist might be apolitical?
It’s odd but it slightly bothers me that it is worded “an atheist” all the time. I consider myself “atheist” rather than “an atheist”. I consider my atheism an action.
I find it usually more difficult to come out as a fan of NASCAR than to reveal that I am atheist. LOL
Apparently I live in some alternate reality. My parents always knew I had no faith, and I’ve yet to be in a situation where being atheist has any bearing on anything. I still like the food at religious holidays, though…
Or perhaps you can realize that simply speaking out about atheism is not “normative” or “Manichean”, or go fuck yourself, or both.
Anna, you are not the only one. The questions about who I came out first or who was the hardest one to come out to do not apply. I’ve always been an atheist and I’ve always said so. I only realized there was a meaning apart from the rituals to religion after I was 12.
I guess I shouldn’t have taken that survey because I never really “came out” as areligious. It’s really a subject that rarely comes up. Many questions did not have appropriate answers.
Oh and you can leave questions unanswered. I did that a lot.
will still be interested in the results as generalized as, i thought, the survey is… right don smith, didn’t have to answer all questions
I’m going to go out on a limb and guess you didn’t grow up in the rural mid-west or anywhere in the south-eastern US, Anna.
Very badly designed poll. Makes many assumptions that force either not answering or answering in ways that later become self-contradictory. Many options left out which also force compromise answer or none. It asks for age range, but also assumes everybody is working and currently raising children–among other problems. Assumes you are either “out” or “closeted.”
I felt uncomfortable with all of the “coming out” questions as well – I never “came out” and announced I was an atheist. It wasn’t anybody’s d–n business. I just ‘was’.
I have been asked in the past, and informed the asker that I was nontheistic. Usually the questioner would leave me alone, but occasionally they would attempt to “save” me, resulting in me telling them to “f–k off”.
The “coming out” questions left me with the impression that atheism is something to be ashamed of, which I am not. Like those of the GBLT community, I just wish to be left alone, and not be discriminated against.
Same for me.
People who say “I’m spiritual, not religious” have long been a pet peeve of mine. I’ve taken it to mean they like to drink herbal teas and light scented candles while reading The Tao of Pooh and Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, or perhaps play with their Tarot cards. For all intents and purposes the people I know who say this are atheists but are afraid of the word; I think also a scientific view of the world doesn’t interest them. A shame.
I had trouble with the “coming out of the closet” questions. I am not ashamed of my atheism nor do I worry about social, familial or professional repercussions. What I do worry about is being proselytized. It’s annoying to explain to people that:
* I don’t believe in Hell so I’m not worried about going there after I die,
* I’m not angry with god,
* I’ve read the Bible several times
* I’m familiar with the basic tenets of Christianity,
* I’m not interested in talking with a minister/missionary, and, most important,
* I’m not interested in discussing religion with you.
I have to say that I tried my best with that survey but became frustrated by the increasingly stupid, narrow questions,the end questions about sexual preferences I left blank, not seeing the relevance. Bad survey in my opinion by some woolly thinkers. In one box I must admit I typed ‘ hello from planet Earth’ in exasperation.
Where I’m from, an “extreme liberal” is someone who wants a night watchman state. About the only thing that unite “liberals” across various political cultures is that they like the word “liberty”.
Yeah, the survey answer options leave a lot to be desired. I spent my early years in teh “Holy Land”, watching my father dig holes and bring up pot sherds. ‘Round about age 5 or so, I vaguely realised that Jesus was just a guy, y’know. I haven’t believed in any religion since. [Well, of course, except Pastafarianism and the Church of the Great Spider and the True Faith of the Sacred Cat…] So there wasn’t an appropriate answer.
Why do I not tell my mother? Because she would piss and moan and Be Concerned – tho’ as a New England Episcopalian, she wouldn’t be unduly concerned about my faith, per se – she’d worry that I was bring social stigma upon my self by Not Being Seen in church. In a hat and gloves. Then I’d have to explain that “Episcopal” is an anagram of “Pepsi Cola” and I’m a Coke drinker, myself…
I didn’t like the survey: it ignores MY particular demographic, where in my personal, social and work interactions literally NO relibious discussion takes place. I’m sure I work with or associate with the churched, but it literally NEVER comes up.
How does one “come out” in an environment where it’s irrelevant? There is no need to.
Maybe living in Noo Yawk makes a difference. Maybe working with engineers does. Maybe associating with geeks and nerds is the determining factor here.
‘Course I DO get the occasional Mormon or Witness at the door. THEN my NYC “go ahead, mess with me! make my day” face handles any issues. And the battleaxe visible from the front door… :)
My husband is Polish, very staunch Catholic in an odd sort of way. He doesn’t actually go to mass very often, but he always crosses himself before going to bed or to work. He suspects I don’t really believe, but isn’t 100% certain.
I know my dad “came out” to my mom a few years ago. She’s not particularly religious (hasn’t been to church in years, I think) but it upset her quite a bit to know that he really didn’t think there was anything after death.
While it is comforting to believe that our loved ones are still around somewhere and we’ll see them again, that doesn’t make it true. If there is a creator out there, I don’t think he/she/it is really all that concerned about us on a personal level, so why bother trying to appease such a being?
Coincidentally, the LDS missionaries stopped by the house today – the first time they’ve ever come by. I told them no thanks, we already had a religion. When they asked what it was, I hesitantly said Catholic. They wanted to know if I was familiar with the Mormon faith, and if there was anything in particular I didn’t like about it. I pondered giving them the list of things but then realized I really had more important things to do with my day. I figure if I had said atheist, they wouldn’t have left me alone the rest of the afternoon.
I was a bit taken aback by the “stigmatization” questions. Feeling stigmatized is purely subjective. I’m sure there are many religious people who would love to stigmatize me. But I could give a rat’s ass what they think, so it has no effect.
On the other hand, I’m sure my deep sighs and eye-rolling and looking around the room during prayers makes some religious folks uncomfortable. In other words, I’m much more likely to stigmatize the religious, because so many of them are insecure and always seeking approval and validation.
Also, add me to the list of people who never “came out.” If someone asks, I tell them. But no one ever asks.
what a strange survey. the questions were really not well designed. it’s a giant exercise in begging the question(s). I had the hardest time with the “coming out” questions. for example, i have no idea who in my family knows I’m atheist. I’m certain my mom knows because it accidentally came up in a conversation once (assuming she bothered to remember the conversation), but the rest? my family is so mildly religious it’s barely noticeable, so it’s just not a subject for conversation.
same here. until I moved to Canada and encountered the North American way of being Christian, I thought it was a default position you were born into, like your family. it never occurred to me that one can change from Catholic to Protestant, the same way it would be impossible to change being from a Polish family to being from a Chinese family.
can I borrow your dad?
Heather, Polish Catholicism is very weird. For example, abortion is often seen as less immoral than preemptive birth control, because abortion is a sign of a one time (yeah riiiight…) slip-up, whereas the Pill means you’re going to have PREMEDITATED sex!!! oh noes!!
I had to quit several pages in. The politics and “spiritual person” questions were bad enough, but what really stumped me were the ones about how I felt about religion “before becoming an atheist”. As a kid I believed in Jesus the same way I believed in King Arthur, Robin Hood, and Paul Bunyan. As a teenager I took none of those stories seriously. Was that “a gradual process over many years”? Did I have “a weak belief in god” or consider the Bible to be “the word of God”? I have no idea. Basically as soon as I started thinking about such things in any serious way, I realized they were all just fairy tales. Before that I literally had no opinion. But the survey doesn’t seem to allow for that; for many questions, all the available answers are equally wrong.
*sigh*
I gave up at “Where do you live?”. There’s an option for Australia and Pacific Islands, but no New Zealand.
Jadehawk: Yeah, tell me about it. When we found out we were unexpectedly expecting, I assumed we would be having another baby. My religious, moral husband instead wanted to talk about our “options” and see about having it “taken care of.” I told him he was a pretty crappy Catholic if he would actually consider that, even for 10 seconds.
Oddly enough, we had been using two different methods of birth control at the time. So he didn’t have a problem with that either.
well, you’re a heathen and he’s a man, so it’s different. but i’ve known girls and women in poland who had an easier time convincing an ob-gyn to give them an abortion than to prescribe the pill. and they say it’s more embarrassing, too.
seriously weird world
and then there’s the rural aspect where not showing up to church means you’re poor and are hiding from embarassment: i can’t remember how exactly that worked, but i think All saits was for showing off the new winter furs, Easter was for the new summer haircuts… and I can’t remember what christmas was for.
:-p
#55
I gave up at “Where do you live?”. There’s an option for Australia and Pacific Islands, but no New Zealand
Don’t worry too much, according to our constitution New Zealand is a state of Australia any way.
“The States” shall mean such of the colonies of New South Wales, New Zealand, Queensland, Tasmania, Victoria, Western Australia, and South Australia
http://www.aph.gov.au/SEnate/general/Constitution/preamble.htm
I gave up at “Where do you live?”. There’s an option for Australia and Pacific Islands, but no New Zealand.
good thing I filled that survey out this week instead of next week then.
;)
Don’t worry too much, according to our constitution New Zealand is a state of Australia any way.
Pah! The Western Island’s always tried to claim us as their own. We can’t help it that we’re brighter, better looking & more accomplished.
Ichthyic: you’re moving here or coming to visit?
Had a feeling the questions were very US biased, because in societies like where I come from, Scandinavia, nobody demand to know anything about your beliefs, or lack of, and very seldom offer any information about their own.
Same goes for Australia, where I am just finishing one and a half life sentence (by having lived there, in the western world’s biggest prison, Western Australia).
Even during the times I spent in Canada, religion was never an issue, nor discussed much. And church going was to my liking, – non-existent.
In Sweden it is an alcoholic.
Cornelis Vreeswijk was a great one!
Another was Kolingen, although he was only a cartoon character.
You could send your comments to the authors of the surveys
http://atheistnexus.org/profile/tomarcaro
Several of the built-in biases of the question may be understood in light of this statement:
>I am currently doing research on “coming out in the Bible Belt” and invite you to contact >me if you’d like to participate.
http://atheistnexus.org/profile/admin
Also, the site owner — who apparently assisted in writing the survey — describes himself as “…a former fundamentalist minister who has seen the light of science and reason.”
They failed to capture the un-conflicted disbeliever who never really cared much about religion in this survey because — if they even know that such exists — it is not what they are trying to study.
The survey is flawed in other ways, though. I think Dr. Arcaro should hear from you.
It’s weird that this survey thinks people have to “come out” as atheists. That’s a strange proposition.
Surveys always tell a lot about the question setters.
I think it’s rather the norm here that people are more or less atheistic (some go to church every now and then but it doesn’t mean much), and it takes more courage to be a strongly religious person than a strong atheist. People are actually ashamed to talk about religion or base any choices on bible. Everybody looks you funny if you say something about god.
Christmas (I don’t have trouble with that word, as it’s really not a religious holiday) greetings from the black and snowless Northern Europe!
To read these replies, you’d think there was no such thing as an atheist closet. I can tell you, that’s not so. At least not in the U.S. I had some issues with the survey, but not its basic premise.
Urgh, these guys committed one of my biggest pet peeves– “transgender” is not a gender in and of itself! There are, at the very least, two sorts of transgendered genders.
I’m sure I’m not the only trans individual who tends to either not fill out a survey like this, or doesn’t account for myself as trans–I consider myself to be a man first, transgendered a distant second.
Ward S. Denker: You have to remember that the concepts of “conservative” and “liberal” are relative.
Makes me wonder. I have the suspicion that if I check “moderate”, this will be read as a political position to the far right of the local conservative catholic party, and if I say “very liberal”, it will not be read as libertarian.
Unless they adjust for where you say you live…
featheredfrog: How does one “come out” in an environment where it’s irrelevant?
Yes. If I tell the truth to everyone who expresses an interest, and less than one person a year expresses an interest, am I “out” or “closeted”? If sex and religion are Not Talked About, can one come out without breaking the personal boundaries of everyone in hearing range?
uri: You could send your comments to the authors of the surveys
I would, but I cannot find an e-mail address on the page and I have no interest in joining for commenting. (Also, that site has major google ad fail.)
#HK: I am another NZ-er who found that question extremely frustrating!! In the end I plumped for “Pacific Islands” but only cos I’m in a good mood…!
All round, a very weird survey. I’m not sure the results will be of any use.
My problem with the survey was that there’s one question where one possible answer is “I don’t discuss my private beliefs”, but on all the others it was either “I’m closeted to some extent” or “everyone knows I’m an atheist”. There seems to be no option for “Nobody knows I’m an atheist because it never comes up in conversation, I’m not hiding it or anything”.