Is it surprising?

[doormouse11]

what do you think?

[Antrax]

Where did you get this statistic from? On face value it sounds like crap (or at the very least, a poorly made survey), but I'm curious.
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After years of disappointment with get rich quick schemes, I know I'm gonna get rich with this scheme. And quick!

[Da5id]

Indeed. I think there is a good percentage of "religious" people that doubt the existance of God but continue the rituals. So if your 2% is based upon those that explicitly state they don't believe in God, I think that's bad methodology.

[Leptonn]

Strictly speaking, half of the world's population is from traditionally Western religious traditions and the other half is from traditionally Eastern religious traditions, with the Western 'half' being slightly larger. In other words, roughly 3 billion, or 50% of the population, were not raised to be monotheistic, and thus does not believe in "some sort of god".

I think that the point you are trying to make is that lots of people have faith in some higher power. [edit]I think that many people believe that this higher power cannot be encapsulated in a single simplistic deity.[/edit]

^{Edited to replace a horribly strongly-worded rebuttal with a gentler opinion.}

[Da5id]

I'd say most people are "eastern"

Other than that I wholeheartedly disagree with you. It could be a translation thing.

Although in re blunt. Yeah. You are sharp like bowling ball, swift like tree.

[extropalopakettle]

[extropalopakettle]

And people have "accused" Catholicism of being polytheistic over it's notion of the Holy Trinity - that God is One God in three persons (Father, Son, Holy Spirit).

[extropalopakettle]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polytheistic

[Sessie]

Catholicism...it's three--THREE--THREE GODS IN ONE!

Ahem...sorry.
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"I have an everyday religion that works for me: love yourself first, and everything else falls into line." --Lucille Ball

[Da5id]

Leptonn: I see what you're saying now.

[extropalopakettle]

http://www.zpub.com/un/pope/relig.html

[Guest]

hehe, so it looks like the statistic is crap.

Leptonn

[doormouse11]

oops - that was me ^

[Jedo the Jedi]

In doormouse's defense, 80% of statistics are made up anyway.

[jja]

[doormouse11]

Huh, the way you put it, I'm not quite sure what I was asking.

I guess I am wondering if people who don't believe in a "supernatural" type of higher power are enough of a minority to really stand out.

I remember when I went to church, I was told that Christians really stood out in society - it was implied that Christians were a minority. I live in the Bible belt though, so I don't really don't think that that's true at all.

I currently spend most of my time at a college campus, so while I'm not anxious to say that I don't believe in God (just as I tend to avoid politics...), I don't actually feel like much of an odd ball. But I get the impression college campuses aren't really that religious, so I don't know if that would be the case elsewhere.

Maybe it would be better to ask whether atheists stand out in society in general.

[Da5id]

I think that the true minority is people that actually think about their spirituality. Of this minority some believe in this religion or that religion, some believe in something they wouldn't call a religion, and some are atheists.

The majority just believe what they were brought up to believe.

[Leptonn]

I think that it is natural to seek purpose in life and that sort of thing. Those questions have traditionally been answered by people who want to scare others into behaving.

If there is no more to a human than the sum total of his/her parts (ie: no soul, in any form), then I think that it could be argued that purpose-in-life questions need not involve higher powers because there is no need for them, needless of any possible existence.

However, the concept of a god has become so irrevocably ingrained into western society that even the most atheistic among us ought to honestly review the nature of our affection for the Flying Spaghetti Monster. It is like aliens: there probably aren't any Little Green Men among us, yet if you took a sample of 100 westerners and asked them to draw a picture of an alien, you would likely get 95 images of a 4' high green guy with almond eyes and webbed fingers.

[Da5id]

*tagging fixed.....grammar left alone

[jja]