New God Study

A new Baylor study on religious beliefs is a bit more detailed than most. You can download the full report, American Piety in the 21st Century: New Insights to the Depths and Complexity of Religion in the U.S.

Many prior studies, like the CUNY ARIS I've discussed, had very generic categories of belief, and very simple questions regarding faith in God. These sorts of studies consistently found the amount of nonreligious persons in the mid-teens. This study aimed to differentiate faith in types of God, and its results are very interesting. For one thing, although 10.8% of persons are "religious nones", only 5.2% were willing to self-identify as atheists. The researchers think that the lower score here is due to the more pointed questions which differentiate between unaffiliated religious persons (unaffiliated with a particular church or denomination) and truly nonreligious persons.

In 2004, the General Social Survey reported that 14.3 percent of the population had no religion, but by using a more detailed measure in the Baylor survey, researchers determined that only 10.8 percent of the population or approximately 10 million Americans are unaffiliated.

"We believe, and are going to argue, that it [the statistics] has more to do with how you ask about the religious connection than what it says about the commitment of the average American to their faith," said Dr. Kevin Dougherty, assistant professor of sociology and one of the Baylor Survey researchers. (Baylor U source article)

The four "God types", referred to as Type A, B, C and D, and their % belief:

Authoritarian: 31.4%
Benevolent: 25.0%
Critical: 16.0%
Distant: 23.0%

Another breakdown (interesting!) by regional majority of each type view:

NE -- 21.2% Critical
South -- 43.5% Authoritarian
West -- 30.3% Distant
Midwest -- 28.8% Benevolent

Of course, the high amount of Jewish persons and liberal Christians (both Catholic and Protestant) in the NE made me predict that Distant would win there, not Critical.

USA Today

The four visions of God outlined in the Baylor research aren't mutually exclusive. And they don't include 5.2% of Americans who say they are atheists. (Although 91.8% said they believe in God, some didn't answer or weren't sure.)

The Waco Tribune-Herald

For example, there is a strong gender differential in belief in God. Women, he said, tend toward the more engaged versions (types A and B), while men tend toward the less engaged and are more likely to be atheist.

More than half the blacks in the study said they believe in the Authoritarian God. None surveyed said they were atheist.

Lower-income and less-educated folk were more likely to worship god types A or B, while those with college degrees or earning more than $100,000 were more likely to believe in the Distant God or be atheists, the Baylor study concluded.

Getting agnostic and even atheist participation on Baylor’s religion survey didn’t seem to be a problem, he added. Although 10.8 percent did not claim any affiliation with any faith family or house of worship, only 5.2 percent of those surveyed declared themselves to be atheists.

Something else I'm not surprised about?

Chron.com

It found that about 41 percent believe Atlantis existed; 37 percent believe places can be haunted; and 52 percent believe that dreams can foretell the future. About 12 percent believe in astrology and psychics, and about 25 percent believe in UFOs.

There is, and always has been, a sort of pervasive superstitous human mindset. When people accept magical, invisible beings, (angels, demons, gods) and miracles with little or no evidence, their credulity simply extends to other regions of naïveté as well -- Atlantis being a real place, UFOlogy, Bigfoot, Loch Ness...etc. Religious belief either causes this lower bar of skeptical thinking or is a symptom thereof, but it clearly correlates with it.
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