With Pope Benedict's visit to the United States this week, Gallup has released a survey measuring Americans views on various religious groups as well as atheists. Favorable perceptions of atheists are down 2% from 2006, though this variation falls within the margin of error for the two surveys. Overall, favorable perceptions of all religious groups are down, perhaps a sign of the kind of growing intolerance for outgroups or dissimilar others that occurs during times of economic hardship. For example the increased negativity towards Muslims detailed below is a classic "scapegoat" indicator.
Here's what Gallup reports:
Gallup first asked Americans to rate these religious groups in this fashion in an August 2006 panel survey, and since then, there have been declines in positive ratings for many of the more favorably viewed religious groups. For example, the net positive score for Catholics was +44 in the 2006 survey, compared to the current +32. But there were also declines in the net positive scores of Jews (from +54 to +42), Baptists (from +45 to +35), and Methodists (from +50 to +45).
It is unclear why the net positive ratings for most groups have declined, unless Americans are just less positive about religion overall today than they were two years ago. Groups such as atheists and Scientologists that rated negatively in 2006 are still rated negatively today, with similar scores over time in most cases. One exception concerns Muslims, who saw their net rating tumble from -4 in 2006 to -17 in the current survey.
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Compared to "giggles, the couch abuser, we're clearly superior!"
Naive people like me see these polls, and still think "Geez, I thought they were smarter than that."
"Always mit der pissing on das marches...I-I mean, parades!"
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It looks like the real story here is that the opinion of mainstream Christianity and Islam have decreased about 10%, while evangelical Christianity, Mormonism, atheism, and Scientology stayed about the same. The rating for fundamentalist Christianity increased about 10%. It looks overall like people are less positive about Christianity and Islam, fundamentalist means something more similar to evangelical now, and people's opinion of religions they don't know as much about hasn't changed.
A friend of mine thinks the economy has nothing to do with it.
She thinks that America's (mind you, she is one, as am I) attitude to any sort of conflict is to "beat them at their own game".
At the micro-social level, you can see this in the rank hypocrisy of the denialists, especially evolution: "we expel those whose views we don't like while at the same time claiming we're being expelled for our views", etc.
Now scale that up a bit to a piece of history: when was science at its most popular (and thus, the way paved for the end of the anti-evolution laws across the various states)?
Right after Sputnik. Those "Godless Commies" were suddenly technologically and scientifically ahead of us (nevermind Lysenko, of course). The only way to beat them was to prove that American Capitalism could produce better technology and better science, which it did - science budgets in schools exploded, anti-science rhetoric retreated, we put a man on the moon and got stick-free frying pans.
But the attitude was not that reason and science was better than anything else, only that it was the weapon of the Soviets and we had to beat them with it.
Now, here we are in a war where the enemy is driven not by science, but by religious fervor of an intensity not seen in centuries. So, do we fall back and beat them with a weapon of proven efficiency, science and reason?
No. We set out to prove that we can be more of a fundamentalist nuthouse than they are. We (well, They, 'cause I want no part of this) are acting like the only way to win is to prove we're "holier than thou" as if faith and mere righteousness will actually be more effective than actually being "right". America's leadership and citizens have chosen to fight them with a weapon they wield more powerfully than we do.
As Ford Prefect notes:
"We're not obsessed by anything, you see," insisted Ford.
"..."
"And that's the deciding factor. We can't win against obsession. They care, we don't. They win."
"I care about lots of things," said Slartibartfast, his voice trembling partly with annoyance, but partly also with uncertainty.
"Such as?"
"Well," said the old man, "life, the Universe. Everything, really. Fjords."
"Would you die for them?"
"Fjords?" blinked Slartibartfast in surprise. "No."
"Well then."
"Wouldn't see the point, to be honest."
Well, at least we're still ahead of the Scientologists, if only just.
I wonder how we atheists would score compared to Satanists. Unless we are considered Satanists.
A thought occurred to me while looking at this list. I think that the column I would like to see increased is the "neutral" column. Sure, as a non-believer, having citizens have a positive view would make life easier, but ideally, I would like particular points of view on the supernatural to have little or no influence as far as a "positive" perception or "negative" perception. There are good and bad people in all of the ideological positions listed.