92% of their population lives in either California, Texas, or NYC, if you do the maths.
this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2025
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33% have a college degree yet only 3% are atheist. That's batshit crazy. I can't imagine having the critical thinking skills needed for a degree and not using those skills to figure out that god is a fairy tale.
Yes I know lots of educated people are religious - I had several christian professors when I was studying mathematics / computer science. That doesn't make it any less crazy to me.
Wait until you develop a chronic health issue and you discover how many so-called physicians jabber about god. It's fucking grim out there.
I think you are overestimating the intelligence required to get a degree in this country, also lots of intelligent people have religious beliefs of some level.
And most people who don't necessarily believe in god or practice any religion still respond to such questions with whatever religion they were born into because it's not important enough to them to take a hard stance like calling themselves atheist, or maybe they choose to be agnostic so they might not pick the atheist option.
My point is lots of factors go into surveys like these, they don't necessarily paint a super accurate picture, since any type of survey will have some external and internal biases and sampling issues baked into them
Being part of a Religion has social benefits, so don't be surprised if a lot of those non-Atheists don't trully believe it but participate in it because it's good for them or because of social pressure.
Certainly, and speaking in terms of Christians which is the ones I'm more familiar with, considering the number of people who actual strictly even just try to follow ALL the teachings of Jesus or even all of the 10 commandments, almost all "Religious" people pick and chose which parts they believe and which they don't.
(In modern society Greed and Envy by themselves are probably regularly broken by 99% of Christians).
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What's not represented in the graph.. I think you'll find a large portion of agnostics and "cultural Christians". I.e. people who go to church because they're raised that way in their community expects it.
Even if you don't go to church if you were raised going to church and then stopped, you still might call yourself a [cultural] Christian.
Also being atheist has a bad reputation attached to it for some people, so someone who meets the definition might not self identify as one.
Similarly I expect that's also why there are a fewer percentage of Democrats than there are Republicans. I may have voted down ballot for only Democrats, but am I a DNC supporting Democrat? Not really.
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very very interesting indeed. i wonder what are the effects of this ..
Honestly the most shocking number to me is that 65% of Americans own a house. How can 62% have a household income "over $50,000" and 65% own a house? Is it all old people?
Large cities and rich people heavily skew both the average and median cost for housing. It's not cheap, but there's plenty of smaller cities and towns that have affordable options.
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My 3 year old has a college degree? Dang! No wonder I can't understand half the shit he says.
88% own a car, but only 82% have a license? Interesting
You don't need a license to own a car. You need one to drive it.
You need one to drive it
legally
There are people, especially in the rural south, who own and operate a vehicle without a license.
Sometimes even congressmen
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The 42% are democrats and 47% are republicans is the true surprise. That is a huge difference even though it might not seem like it.
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I think they should be including a range for the true value for the minorities, since a lot of these numbers are inexact.