the gods must be crazy

Since I have probably hit my serious post quota for a bit, I figured I would quickly post an interesting social fact (or anomaly?). In some work that I am doing right now I was reading through some unpublished findings from a prof that I am working with. One weird thing stuck out in a model using a national random sample... people who have 'no religion' are .045 times more likely than Evangelicals to believe in an authoritative God and .501 times more likely to believe in a critical God.

I just saw it today and so haven't really had the chance to think about it too much just yet, but it seems really odd that someone who has 'no religion' first off actually believes in some form of a God, and second off that this God is relatively engaged with the world. A god cannot really be too authoritative or critical if they are not engaged and active - odd for a non-religious person. This doesn't necessarily hint at a causal relationship, but it is interesting that there is any relationship to start with.

There ya go. Even those with 'no religion' often really do have religious beliefs of some sort.