{"id":3408,"date":"2009-11-21T10:39:23","date_gmt":"2009-11-21T18:39:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/wordpress\/?p=3408"},"modified":"2009-11-21T10:41:13","modified_gmt":"2009-11-21T18:41:13","slug":"variation-in-belief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/variation-in-belief\/","title":{"rendered":"Variation in belief 1988-2008, the rise of skepticism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Below in the comments David Heddle says<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Of course there is no way, that I can see, of estimating how many of those leaving the church were self-identified Christians but who were actually in-the-closet unbelievers. Perhaps (who knows?) this is a sizable group, one that is beginning to come out of the closet as the stigma of being a non-believer wanes. Those cases, however many there may be, are a win-win: better for the church they have left, better for society that they feel comfortable enough to stop the masquerade.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In the GSS there is a variable GOD which asks how confident people are their belief in God. Below are the year-by-year changes for those who are Protestant & Catholic, those with “No Religion” & the whole population. 95% confidence intervals in parentheses.
\n
\n\"protcathrel\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"norelig\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"beliefvariation\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Because of the sample sizes I am provisional about my conclusions, but, it seems that:<\/p>\n

1) The religious categories stayed relatively stable<\/p>\n

2) A slight increase in skepticism toward belief in God was evident in the total sample<\/p>\n

3) Relatively stability in the fraction who “Know God Exists”<\/p>\n

#2 is explicable in light of #1 if there was simply a change in the religious categories, something which we can be much more confident about (the “No religion” segment doubled over this span). #3 makes sense if the defection toward greater skepticism was generally from lukewarm or weaker believers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Below in the comments David Heddle says: Of course there is no way, that I can see, of estimating how many of those leaving the church were self-identified Christians but who were actually in-the-closet unbelievers. Perhaps (who knows?) this is … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3408"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3408"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3408\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3415,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3408\/revisions\/3415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}