I can attest to the first point in the article. I’m a former ‘relaxed’ Catholic from Spain and was taken aback by the extremism I encountered among U.S. Catholics. They scared me, their behaviour was akin to European Opus Dei adepts.

Could this be related to the fact that Europeans have had two world wars, esp #2, with camps and horrors of real evil.

After reading Eli Weisel, NIGHT, do think if not an atheist then certainly an agnostic. If anyone has a reason not to be "religious or a GOD, it would be the Jews after WW2 and many others forced into the camps, how could you believe in that kind of God??

if God in omnipotents then it is logic that God is also omni-vindictive!

Read David Hume on this subject.

I have studied religions, taught them, a religious scholar and bet on it I know that Bible, and I also know that on this site we are being spied on by these "fundamentalists" but also it has been my experience that people I have known that attended religious colleges often come out devout atheists!! Go figure!

In the South, a saying was, everybody felt sorry for preacher's kids!!!

IMHO most people just go to church cause everybody else does and it is good for social networking!! People will say and do anything to get ahead!

However, in the so called United States we do have this amendment called "SEPARATION OF STATE AND RELIGION", but no one is obeying it, so it appears no one is obeying the constitution and our rules and laws, so why not?

Also in science there is this law: LAW OF CONSERVATION OF MASS/MATTER: matter is neither created or destroyed it simply changes form.

dust to dust ashes to ashes!

NOTHING COMES FROM NOTHING, SO I CAN BELIEVE IN A CREATOR, BUT NOT A GOD. BUT WHAT A CREATOR DOES IS MAKE THINGS,AND THE DNA EXPERIMENTS ARE RATHER SPECTACULAR AND HORRIFIC!

It's obvious they didn't talk to me.

You sound disappointed. Why?
I'm not. Open-mindedness about the existence of god is not the problem. The problem is organized religions. They are mostly death cults with strange and dangerous beliefs.

I don’t think I would put too much credence in this data. Personally, I don’t believe there can be too many closet believers amongst atheists, some who profess to be agnostic will be more likely to still believe, as agnosticism is often a halfway house for those who want to believe but know the evidence isn’t there. These people are not fully committed to their disbelief, but are living in hope that it will be refuted. I think that there is a far better chance of those who profess a belief in god to not be fully convinced, but due to the need to belong and not wanting be seen as going against the mainstream, they pay lip service and go through the motions of being a believer. There are undoubtedly differences in need of appearing to be religious between Europe and America, nobody in Europe would see the to need to let anyone else know whether they were religious or or not.

Your lead in that most nones are closeted believers is false, your own quoted article says that only 27% of American nones say this vs 23% of Europeans, last time I checked 27% out of a universe of 100% nones can never be construed as "most."

My first thought is that it's because of Europe's past of having state religions and America's past of escaping that. Maybe the Europeans are used to not taking their religion that seriously while Americans were fervent about theirs.

I think a lot of people who leave organized religion may still believe in a spirit or deity. They just don't follow a traditional religion. And in a country like the U.S. where "do your own thing" seems to have more significance, there is a lot more variety in what people feel safe in believing.

According to the site there's 83,000 of us just here

Okay, I am a little confused by the 3rd paragraph from the last in the article. The 2nd and 3rd paragraph before the last raise a serious question and expose a problem with this data.

This being, the survey did or didn't separate out the issue of, not believing in the jewdaic god, but still holding a belief in a god.

It is unknown, but seems likely, most of the nones would survey as not believing in the jewdaic god at all, but some would hold the possibility of some other sky fairy who isn't created by ancient sheep herders.

It would be a real slam to the religious foundations had this survey actually done this. Agnostic.com's profile question has the same flaw.

It seems likely, there are probably many who sit in churches every Sunday who feel this way.

It is hard to imagine that their isn't at least 20 to 30 percent of people in church who are thinking to themselves, "oh this is complete bullshit". This, when it comes down to the logistics of Mary's immaculate screwing and Christ's forgiveness plan.

But, those people will still continue to go to church, even though they are agnostic.

How much damage does it do to the harmful religious institutions, if the article had been headlined, "The Nones believe in a god, they just don't believe in the Christian god."?

So after reading the post and the article, I can honestly say that I really don't care. They need to sort it out for themselves.

This life-long US Atheist has no ‘hidden belief!’

With no state or truly dominant religion, the USA has long fostered religious competitiveness; it’s not pretty. Then ‘we’ rallied ‘American’s’ to fight those ‘godless communists’ during the cold war with government sanctioned religion, and it’s never stopped.

God propaganda is now stamped and printed on our money, millions of ‘persecuted christians’ have been allowed to become US Citizens. ‘Blessing America’ has become a political prerequisite, and such trends are viewed by commercial entities as an opportunity to promote and sell more, in this case, religion..

I’m glad the civilized world is freer of this crap than my nation, gives me the occasional glimmer of hope for humanity ~

Some of this may be true. Wasn't there a famous non-believer who recently got baptized "just in case?" I'm trying to figure out how you would "go back" when you find that Jesus appears to be a conglomerate of several people and his big book of "how it all happened" seems to have been put together some 300 plus years after the times of Jesus. This is exactly why that book makes no sense and is contradictory. If a person knows this how can they believe the gospels were written by followers when the gospels themselves are so flawed? How does one know these things and pray and blubber "oh, Jebus, I am so sorry?" Why would you be sorry for finding the truth?

On the other hand, you could come to a truth that Saul of Tarsus is credited with writing two thirds of the NT and he never knew or met Jesus. Christianity follows him and this man never knew if he was "in or out of his body" when he got his revelations.

This will be a sociological question. This is, Americans are socialised into acting as Christian. From the most levels, Americans have 'In God we trust' on currency. Their Constitution includes God solidly as a part of it. Therefore, as part of just being an American, the carry over from primary and secondary agents of socialisation generate a commonality of behaviour which makes acting in a 'Christian' way is merely the social norm. I suggest reading C Wright Mills, Anthony Giddens, Michael Haralambos, as a start to understanding the statement on 'Nones'.

So basically they aren't really "nones" at all.
They're just fucking liars, calling themselves something they are not.

I say rubbish. Unless they count praying as someone like me yells JESUS CHRIST or WHAT THE HELL all the time.

I'm not surprised. I know a lot of people who don't go to church, consider themselves as members of a particular denomination, or call themselves spiritual; but can't even imagine that it's possible to not believe in god.

Wow

Well if you factor in the tendency of some "nones" in the US to believe in things like psychics and hauntings and crystals I can maybe see that.

But I don't believe any of that nonsense woo.,