See Vox fail at statistics (once again)

I do love demonstrating how pretentious asses can be just as flagrantly and hilariously wrong as anyone else. Arguably my favorite of them all would be Vox Day, particularly for his ever-ludicrous “arguments” against atheism and atheists. Here’s your latest dose of Vox failure:

The stunning effectiveness of the New Atheist campaign:

The percentage of self-identified atheists according to the September/October Psychology Today

1944: 4 percent
1964: 3 percent
1994: 3 percent
2007: 4 percent

One can't but help notice that as per their stunning dedication to the truth in all its forms, atheists often try to count agnosticism or "no religion" as atheism whenever trying to inflate their numbers, while leaving the "no religion" sorts out of the accounting whenever average intelligence levels or criminal predilections are being compared.

Let us count the number of ways in which this is stupid:

First, it is incredibly naive, even moronic, to believe that the “New Atheists” form any sort of a “campaign”, with the implication that they are out to start a new movement of their own. It’s no more than a bunch of atheists who are very firm in their beliefs and who consider religion to be a negative force in the world, and who therefore decry said negative force. There are no atheist missionaries, bus tours, seminars or pamphlets being handed out. There are conventions and book signings, yes, but notice that these are aimed at like-minded people (ie. other atheists, agnostics, skeptics, unbelievers in general) and are intended to be a place where people of similar beliefs and mindsets can join and converse, exchange ideas, and so forth. When one refers to the “New Atheist movement”, they merely refer to the rise in numbers of people who become staunch atheists, and not any sort of proselytizing or conversion campaign.

Second, the fact that Vox drags up statistics from one single source and then proudly acclaims it as though it were the absolute reference to swear by, just goes to show how utterly foolish he is. With the rate of errors and miscalculations that permeate any polls and research – and especially, biases – using one single source of information is no way to do anything other than lose credibility.

Speaking of statistics (yeah, I can pull up those poll thingies, too): one piece of research concludes that there are “somewhere between 504,962,830 and 749,247,571” atheists, agnostics and non-believers in the world. These are “conservative estimates”, as apparently, including those who are merely “non-religious” would nearly double the numbers. Considering there are an estimated 6.6 billion people on Earth, this places global atheism levels at anywhere from 7.65% to 11.35%.

Vox (conveniently) doesn’t mention whether those numbers from Psychology Today are American or worldwide estimates, so let’s check out the number of atheists in the United States: according to Barna, 12% of adults in America considered themselves to be atheists back in 2004, a number that will certainly have increased since then. Another source, the reliable Adherents.com, places the numbers of “nonreligious” people in America in 2004 at about 16%.

As a final point of contention: you may notice that I include those who are merely “nonreligious” in my estimates above. That is because whatever people may say to the contrary, anyone who doesn’t believe in God is an atheist. Yes, different nonbelievers identify by different names – agnostics, skeptics, humanists, etc. – but, in my opinion, a large majority of these people choose not to call themselves atheists simply because of the persistent negative stigma attached to that term. But, the fact remains that the description for “atheist” is “someone who does not believe in any one or more deities”. Regardless of their stance on the matter (whether they are the loud & proud “New Atheists” or mere skeptics who simply don’t know whether there is a God (or gods) or not), anyone who is nonreligious arguably also doesn’t believe in deities, and therefore, are atheists. It’s simple definitions.

So, in the end: the fact that atheists (including New Atheists) count anyone who is nonreligious (or just a majority of them) as being atheists is not twisting facts or being dishonest; it’s merely following basic definitions. Rather, it is Vox who is himself claiming falsehoods when he asserts that atheists are lying to “inflate their numbers”.

There are probably more ways in which what Vox said FAILs; I invite you to take him to pieces in the comments for everyone’s enjoyment.