Which Pew Are You In?

Pittsburgh
Tribune-Review – March 5, 2008

Don`t you love surveys?

The front page of the
Feb. 26 Washington Post carried a story about a

poll conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and
Public Life. It suggested that Americans are fickle
about their religious choices. [In
Major Poll, U.S. Religious Identity Appears Very
Slippery, By Michelle Boorstein and Jacqueline
L. Salmon]

After the scandals that

rocked the U.S. Catholic Church, it shouldn`t
surprise anyone, particularly Pope Benedict. The
Catholic Church has lost more members than any religion
practiced here. But it has replaced its losses from the
massive immigration invasion by Latinos.

Thus, Catholics still
claim 23.9 percent of those polled. The mainline
Protestant faiths (18.1 percent) have lost out to the
newer Evangelical Protestants (26.3 percent). Mormons
and Jews each represent only 1.7 percent of the
faithful. Muslims, Hindus, Jehovah`s Witnesses and
others register at under 1 percent.

Since I am a member of
one of America`s smallest denominations—atheists—I felt
a surge of pride in knowing of my exclusive status. Of
the 35,000 peopled polled by Pew, only 1.6 percent are
in my pew.

Those "unaffiliated"
with any religion have grown to 16.1 percent: 12.1
percent are "nothing in particular"; 2.4 percent
are agnostics; and 1.6 percent atheists.

Of course,
"belonging" may not correlate with believing. Having
lived all over the United States, I have had many
opportunities to speak with members of many corporate
nomad families who admit that the best way to ingratiate
or integrate into many American communities is by
joining a church, particularly one that has members with
clout in the place the newcomers land.

Many people change
churches because they

like or don`t like the

spiritual leader. But many can`t seem to throw off
the need to have spiritual feelings. Do they like being
hectored for dues and warned about being sinners?

While "going to hell"
is currently played down quite a bit, death is still a
"biggie" in the quiver of outrageously ridiculous
arrows the self-appointed righteous religious rulers
have to hold sway over their flocks.

"Getting right with God"
remains a primary inducement for most people`s servitude
to the fantasy of an afterlife. As I prepare to enter my
78th year, I read daily the numerous obituaries of
people who didn`t make that milestone and feel sublimely
lucky to have done so in relatively good health.

For many years I have
been "unchurched." As a widower, though, I
remarried 14 years ago and my bride and I were delighted
to call upon a clergyman relative from each of our two
families to bless our union. These two are wonderful
people, each with a sincere and abiding faith in his
religion, whose moral compasses come not from their
religious beliefs but from moral parents and the
intrinsic goodness of some humans as compared with the
intrinsic evil in others.

But as an atheist, I
find Oxford don and Darwinian exponent Richard Dawkins`

definitions of the various religious permutations
enlightening:

"A theist believes in a
supernatural intelligence who, in addition to his main
work of creating the universe in the first place, is
still around to oversee and influence the subsequent
fate of his initial creation. … He answers prayers,
forgives or punishes sins; intervenes in the world by
performing miracles; frets about good and bad deeds, and
knows when we do them (or even think about doing them).
A deist, too, believes in a supernatural intelligence,
but one whose activities were confined to setting up the
laws that govern the universe in the first place.
Pantheists don`t believe in a supernatural God at all,
but use the word God as a non-supernatural synonym for
nature, or for the Universe, or for the lawfulness that
governs its workings. … Pantheism is sexed-up atheism.
Deism is watered-down theism."

None except atheism and
perhaps pantheism requires courage or brains to adopt.

I must, however, confess
that I evolved from being a "reverent agnostic"
even as I became aware of these various standard
gradations of belief. So where is agnosticism? Again
Dawkins comes to our rescue by describing that position
as "fence-sitting." Any doubts about the fact
that no God exists, he says, have been reconfirmed by
the advance of scientific knowledge and overall human
experience. This essentially gutless position avoids
commitment and again requires no brains.

A look at the history of
religions shows conclusively that religions have done
enormous harm and may lead us all to the ultimate
downfall of life on this planet. Avoiding apocalypse
will involve outgrowing the sway of organized, corrupt
and secularized religious power.

What to do? First become
an agnostic or a pantheist. Come to believe that there
is no power greater than other human helpers that can
restore us to sanity.

From there you quickly
will graduate to the supremely satisfying comfort of
atheism, thus avoiding the quagmire of stultifying
belief in any religion, which, to paraphrase Dawkins, is
jazzed up tooth-fairyism.

Donald A. Collins [email
him], is a freelance writer living in Washington DC and a former long time member of the board of FAIR, the Federation for American Immigration Reform. His views are his own.