No more religious debate

[Angrboda]

If my rather scant reading of the deconversion literature is any indication, it is often not so much the case that reason led people to atheism as it is that reason led them away from religion.

Bart Ehrman's case is typical. He started as a fundamentalist Christian and, as a consequence of study and contemplation, eventually wound his way to a position of agnosticism (last I heard, largely on account of the issue of theodicy). Many find they can't reconcile their desires for truth and knowledge with the answers they find once they go looking for it in the substance of their religion. Their passion for truth pushes them out the other side of faith. (Atheist pastors still in the fold would be an interesting population to study in this regard.)

This is only one of multiple streams that lead to a position of atheism, anti-theism, agnosticism, deism, or non-affiliated non-believer, but it is a prominent one.


Oh, and if you want to toss around correlation, bear in mind that in the United States, religiosity correlates strongly with poverty, lack of education, and stupidity.

Higher education is positively correlated with atheism, agnosticism, and secularity (Baker 2008; Sherkat 2008, 2003; Johnson 1997; Argyle and Beit-Hallahmi 1975). For example, 42 percent of Americans claiming to have ‘‘no religion’’, 32 percent of American atheists, and 42 percent of American agnostics have graduated from college – all higher than the percentage of college graduates in the general American adult population, which is 27 percent (Kosmin 2008; Keysar 2007). Attending college as well as graduate school – and having an ‘‘intellectual orientation’’ – are also significant predictors of who will reject or abandon their religion at some point in their life (Beit-Hallahmi 2007; Altemeyer 2009; Hayes 2000, 1995a; Sherkat and Ellison 1991; McAllister 1998; Altemeyer and Hunsberger 1997; Hadaway and Roof 1988). Furthering the link between education ⁄ intellectualism and secularity, recent studies have found that secular people score markedly higher on tests of verbal ability and verbal sophistication when compared religious people (Sherkat 2006), and secular people also score markedly higher on indicators of scientific proficiency than religious people (Sherkat 2009).

— Zuckerman, 2009