How We Believe_ Science and the Search for God - Michael Shermer [7]
—Church Attendance: Although less than the percentage of people who believe in God, “about two-thirds of the population claim to attend services at least once a month or more often,” Gallup said, while “thirty-six percent say they attend once a week.” By contrast, only 8 percent say they never attend religious services, while 28 percent report that they “seldom” go.
—Church Membership: Matching the figures for church attendance, two-thirds of Americans say they are members of a church or some other religious institution. “Only nine percent of the public respond with ‘none’ when asked to identify a religious affiliation or preference,” Gallup concluded.
—Importance of Religion: Americans match people in other countries in ranking religion as very or fairly important in their lives. In a joint study between Gallup International and the London-based Taylor Nelson Sofres marketing firm covering 60 countries, 87 percent said that they consider themselves to be part of some religion. In America 60 percent say that religion is “very important in their life,” with another 30 percent saying that it is “fairly important.”
—God and Politics: Since 2000 is a presidential election year, Gallup found that 52 percent of voters surveyed “would be more likely to vote for a candidate for president who has talked about his or her personal relationship with Jesus Christ during debates and news interviews.” As anyone who watched the presidential debates knows, all the candidates went on public record to extol their Christian beliefs, including the Democratic candidate Al Gore, not exactly known for his conservatively religious views. On the Republican side, George W. Bush announced that he considered Jesus to be the most influential philosophical thinker in his life.
SKEPTICISM AS A VIRTUE
Is it okay for people to believe in God? A number of atheists objected to this statement. One wrote me: “Religion is a bad idea. Belief in god is a bad idea. These ideas should be self-evident to any rationalist. That religion/belief is common is not a reason to avoid such statements. That religion/belief will perhaps always be with us is not a reason. That religion/belief is old is not a reason. That religion/belief may at times do some good is not a reason. None of these statements are reasons to avoid clearly stating the truth. Anything less is duplicitous, disingenuous, appeasing—and ultimately, helps the other side by providing approval where disapproval should instead be offered.”
“The other side.” What a revealing way to phrase a critical attitude toward religion, whose long history of dividing the world between “our side” and the “other side” is a notoriously bloody one. Should nonbelievers really ape this most nonsalubrious side of the system of belief from which they so often distance themselves? Clearly religion has no monopoly here. The very propensity to cleave nature into unambiguous yeses and noes may very well be an evolutionary by-product whose ultimate outcome could result in the extinction of the species (and a further indication that not everything in evolution can be explained by its adaptive significance).
Another friend who objected to my “okay to believe” statement spelled it out even clearer: “I won’t let anyone who believes in god in my home. I won’t sleep with them and I have none in my social circle. But I can do more.” What “more” shall we do? What more can we do? Should we evangelize against Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and the other systems of religious belief? Since I am a libertarian in more ways than just political, I am disinclined to tell people what they should or should not be doing with their personal lives and beliefs. Nevertheless, I am a scientific and skeptical activist (not just a dispassionate onlooker from the