Really? God is a very broad term. Unless it said the God of Abraham, I think God and creator would be interchangeable. How would you define a being that could create something so vast with something other than god?

If you read the article you would also see that a majority of scientsits see themselves as religious.

God of Abrhaham?  Not nessisarily.  Yet certaintly of a god that exists.

and that many scientsits that don't believe in a god see themselves as spirtual... in otherwords including in people who don't believe in "a god" yet believe there is some sort of creator or higher purpose that people were created for.  There are religions that are godless.

There is a difference between "Atheists" and atheists.

He's just making up something that goes along with his own schema because he's the kind of person that can't handle his beleifs being challenged even when faced with hard evidence.  Trying to downplay the number of people who believe in religion when in reality the number is likely larger then those who simply believe in a god.

Which is pretty ironic really.

Duff Gardens.....Hurrahhhhh!!!

A majority of scientists believe in G-d, but a vast vast majority of non-scientists believe in G-d. Scientists are more likely to be nonreligious than non-scientists, even though they are still most likely religious.

But as akuma's article pointed out, nonreligious people are more likely to be attracted to careers in science.

While true.   I think this has less to do with religion itself as it does the way religion has been recently positioned against science by major figureheads of said religions.

After all at one point the opposite was true... seemingly every scientist was ridiculiously religious and was a scientist because they thought to themselves "How did god do it... how does what he do work."

The problem is a lot of people who said scientsits told how it worked were afraid because it didn't match up exactly with their particular religious scripts that even a majority of religious scholars don't take as literal.

The reason for this is fairly obvious in my mind.  The shift from supporting science to stifling it happened right when the Church got it's power another ironic contradiction of the Dark Ages of Europe.  With Rome gone... the Vatican eventually became the elected "treaty maker" and head of the Germanic nations version of the "UN."  Such a power was addicting to the relgiious leaders who were used to not being the number 1 group when it came to both spirtual and natural authority.  Such natural authority corrupted the leaders and as such literal interpretations have become more popular.

An ironic contradiction since the Dark Ages and fall of Rome are also seen as to what lead to Europe being the intellectual powerhouse it became overshadowing even that of the Arabs who freely encouraged learning.

Were not religion and science pitted as enmies by many... I believe it wouldn't be statistically different from the norm in large degrees.

Also... as for why atheists don't get there own TV shows...

There isn't any reason for it. There isn't really many if any culutral differences.

I mean... you could argue that most TV characters are "atheists" you never see any mention of religious really... unless it's around christmas and one of the actors is jewish or something.

Very few tv shows make an issue of religion... and i'm not even sure what an atheist TV show would be like.

I do have a pretty kickass idea for an "atheist" videogame though. Though i'm not sure if i'd qualify it as atheist so much as generally philosophical.

Exactly!  That's how I've always understood it.

There are several religious scientists in every field, even evolution, although the culture-war-obsessed media wants to paint them all as G-d-hating atheists.  They're just not literalists, and don't believe in some of the newer claims, like "Satan altered our DNA to trick us into believing in evolution on the genetic scale."  They're still just trying to learn more about G-d's handiwork, and other religious people think they are doing Satan's work.  It's hilarious.  You'd expect that after the Enlightenment and the Reformation people would have more freedom to believe how they want to, but it seems that now people will argue "Sorry, your science and my religion don't match up, so you're actually an atheist but didn't know it yet."

Re: TV, yeah, there wouldn't really be a reason for an atheist show.  They're not a "wacky" subculture worth celebrating for comedic effect, the way people expect entertainment out of gay TV.

I'm not sure what an atheist game would even be.  The way you described TV, I could say that Mario is an atheist franchise, but Zelda definitely isn't.  It's interesting that religion is just about everywhere BUT video games.  And now game development is too expensive for most religious game developers.  (I think I have almost every Wisdom Tree NES game.  I'm missing Sunday Funday and the board game one, Bible Buffet.)

Here is a Gallup Poll that my professor handed out in my Science & Religion philosophy class this semester, ironically from the same University that conducted the study in Akuma's post.

GALLUP NEWS SERVICE

PRINCETON, NJ -- There are many ways to measure Americans' belief in God, and in part the conclusions one reaches on this topic depend on how that belief is defined in the question wording. If Americans are simply asked if they believe in God or a universal spirit, more than 90% will say yes. If Americans are given more finely-tuned response categories, it becomes obvious that a somewhat smaller percentage of Americans, although still the substantial majority, are absolutely convinced that God exists.

In several recent Gallup Polls, adult Americans have been asked about God using this more complex format involving five alternative beliefs:

Which comes closest to describing you -- [ROTATED: you are convinced that God exists, you think God probably exists, but you have a little doubt, you think God probably exists, but you have a lot of doubt, you think God probably does not exist, but you are not sure, (or) you are convinced that God does not exist]?

The latest responses to this question, obtained in a May Gallup Poll, lead to several conclusions:

• Seventy-three percent of Americans are classic true believers, convinced that God exists beyond a doubt.
• Eighty-seven percent of Americans are basic believers in the existence of God, saying either that they are convinced that God exists or that God probably exists and they have only a little doubt that this is the case.
• A slightly larger group of 92% of Americans can be classified in a group that tilts toward the existence of God, stating that at the least they think God probably exists, even though some have a lot of doubt about it.
• Only 3% of Americans can be considered to be hard-core atheists, convinced that God does not exist.
• Another 4% are agnostics of a sort, leaning toward a belief that God does not exist, but not sure that this is the case beyond a doubt.

Of interest is the distribution of these beliefs across subgroups in the U.S. population. Just who is it that is most likely to believe in God, and who is least likely to believe in God?

For the purposes of this analysis, we will look at the group of basic believers -- those who are certain, with no doubts, there is a God, and those who have a few doubts but believe there is probably a God. To increase the reliability of the analysis, the figures discussed below are based on an aggregate of more than 2,800 interviews conducted in the October 2005, November 2005, and May 2006 polls.

If anyone is interested, the poll further specifies down to Age, Socioeconomic Status, Gender, Region, and Politics, and I can post those as well.

Too Long, didn't read.

here's my take: its not a surprise that more people are self-reporting atheist.

Back 100 years ago, not believing in God was pretty much unacceptible. You would be a social outcast. Even during the Cold War, what did we call the Russians? Godless Communists!

So now we are living in a much more open society. The people who go to church only for ceremonies (i.e. Weddings and Funerals, and maybe during Christmas/Easter) aren't really religious to begin with; those same people 100 years ago would have still self-reported "religious," but nowadays since there is less of a stigma, they are probably more inclined to say "meh, I'm not really that religious"

Yeah, just stating it because way too many people like to claim that the two are mutually exclusive or that something inherently about religion keeps people from wanting to learn about how the world works.

Kinda annoying.