@Allamanda No, I am NOT missing the point, and I take your point. MY point is the article was misleadingly titled and totally lumped together various concepts and categories, muddling whatever point it was trying to make. The author lumped together nones and atheists to claim many believe in God. "Nones" are not atheists, they are most often people who don't even think about the question of religious affiliation much. They can be agnostic theists, which would be people who kind of like the general idea of deity. The article's title claims it is American Atheists being more religeous than European self-identified Christians.

The main valid part of the article is that Americans in general are far more religeous than Europeans. Well DUH. We knew that already.

@Allamanda I question the very way the article defined atheists. You use the term "non-believers," which I tend to think of as atheists and skeptical agnostics. But the Pew survey lumped them all in with a broader category of people, then predictably found that some have some deity notions, however vague. That is misleading. Atheists do not believe in god(s). That is the definition of atheist. So American atheists do not believe in god(s). The fact the article implies they do is problematic.

@Allamanda The gist of the article seemed to be that atheists and agnostics were fervent in their disbelief. That disbelief was a akin to a religion, ergo, we're religious. I probably misread or misunderstood, that's one of my special skills

@Allamanda That's another an more complex issue. But one factor of course is that numbers, quantity, does influence quality. In the sense that when you live in a community in which large numbers of people belong to a sub-set, that normalizes the behaviour of the sub-set and thereby makes more extreme forms of that behaviour seem less extreme.

That is why I have never had a lot of time for the religious apology, that it is wrong to define a group by the actions and beliefs of its extremists, even to the extent of saying the usual, you are straw maning us whine. "But most of us are not like that. Most Xians, Jews, Moslems, Hindu etc. don't go round bombing abortion clinics."

No you may not do so, but you do create the the world in which the extremist swims, you do help them to justify the ideals, shelter and grow them within your community, promote the idea that the texts and traditions they use are respectable, spread knowledge of those ideas, often without qualifications about how evil/dangerous they are if misinterpreted, normalize those paterns of thinking, and shelter and promote those who are nearly, if not quite extreme, but who willingly offer support and encouragement. Therefore, yes, all religious people do have to carry some of the blame and guilt for what their more extreme elements do.

The other factor of course is simply that Europe with its rich cultural and educational traditions, does offer more alternatives, enough to encourage a culture of questioning.

@Allamanda Another factor at work of course, is the separation of church and state. Most countries in Europe have either a close link between the Catholic church and the state, or a state church. That really weakens the churches, because they are not able to provide a true alternative voice to the state, which deprives them of their main product in the market place of ideas, and they are also unable to blame the state for their own failings, yet have to carry some of the blame for the state's crimes, especially in education. The separation of church and state in the US, greatly strengthens the churches, because it gives them a real role to play as opponents to the political establishment, where in Europe the are without any real function, just a government parasite putting out the same message.