Monday, June 1, 2009

Most likely the last post

So, I have not posted here in a month. This will most likely be the last time I post on this blog, but I wanted to provide the answers to the Christian survey. As I stated before, 7 people answered the survey, and provided some interesting responses, which I talked about earlier.

Here is the take home. Talking about religion, especially for atheists, still seems to be a very uncomfortable subject, which can have drastic consequences. I am avoiding going through all the responses free responses and coding them as having at some time a negative experience because of anti-atheist bigotry, or having no negative experiences, in part because it would be a lot of work that I right now do not have much time for, and because the survey was not scientific. So even if I told you that about 60 percent (a number I pulled out of the air) of the free responses for the atheist survey expressed some sort of discrimination or adverse reaction to telling others about their atheism, it would ultimately tell you nothing. What I think this survey does do, and what its goal was, is to provide evidence that there may be something interesting going on here, and it is worth research dollars. Also, it provides a framework that additional future research can be conducted with.

I was not sure what I would get. I hoped that I would find those stories of a person being afraid to come out to their friends/family were rare, or that those stories of horrific consequences that an atheist had to telling their friends/family about their atheism were rare. This survey does not provide any real figure as to how often this happens. But I do think, that if such occurrences were extremely rare, like one in a hundred, then I would not have gotten the number of responses I got. My survey may have over-counted, or it may have under-counted. I do not think, however, that it would have gotten as many responses from people that had experienced negative reactions if they were the exception to the rule.

I hope you have found this informative. If you are curious more about myself, or my writings, you can continue to follow me at my blog, which I post at often.

No comments:

Post a Comment