It's interesting that Sam Harris would mention atheists and those who deny that Elvis is still alive in the same breath, as if their numbers are somehow equivalent.
In this 2002 CBS News poll, 7% of Americans believed that Elvis was still alive.
Four years later, in this Harris Interactive Poll (no relation to Sam, as far as I can tell), only 4% of Americans identified themselves as atheists.
So it would seem that Americans who think that God is dead are even less prevalent as than Americans who think that Elvis isn't.
“If atheism is a religion, then NOT collecting stamps is a hobby.”
Of course, the difference is that the only thing that unites those who don't collect stamps is a benign apathy to those who do.
If, however, those same people wrote books, produced posters and ran blogs extolling the virtues of not collecting stamps and calling stamp collectors anti-intellectuals, we'd probably call their movement aphilatelism.
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Lionel – a liberal talk show host who used to be on Air America – had a great atheist quote:
ReplyDelete“If atheism is a religion, then NOT collecting stamps is a hobby.”
I love that one.
It's interesting that Sam Harris would mention atheists and those who deny that Elvis is still alive in the same breath, as if their numbers are somehow equivalent.
ReplyDeleteIn this 2002 CBS News poll, 7% of Americans believed that Elvis was still alive.
Four years later, in this Harris Interactive Poll (no relation to Sam, as far as I can tell), only 4% of Americans identified themselves as atheists.
So it would seem that Americans who think that God is dead are even less prevalent as than Americans who think that Elvis isn't.
“If atheism is a religion, then NOT collecting stamps is a hobby.”
ReplyDeleteOf course, the difference is that the only thing that unites those who don't collect stamps is a benign apathy to those who do.
If, however, those same people wrote books, produced posters and ran blogs extolling the virtues of not collecting stamps and calling stamp collectors anti-intellectuals, we'd probably call their movement aphilatelism.