If You’re An Atheist But Still Believe In Supernatural Beings You’re Doing It All Wrong

Part of the appeal of being an atheist is not having to conform to doctrinaire ideas defining your (non) beliefs. However, a new study suggests that atheists aren’t exactly the resolute reality-loving fact-seekers that they live to present themselves as – and, for that matter, nor are they the amoral ethics-void that they’re often portrayed as being. The massive Understanding Unbelief project involved surveying 6600 people in six countries – the UK, the US, China, Japan, Brazil and Denmark – with over a hundred face to face interviews. And look, the results were weird. It turns out that atheists might not believe in God, but a surprisingly large percentage are weirdly cool with other supernatural beliefs with exactly as much supporting evidence: such as life after death and the existence of ghosts. More specifically, the Understanding Unbelief project spoke to atheists and agnostics (people who are unsure on the existence or non-existence of gods) from six different countries and concluded that people are really doing their unbelief differently. On the happy side of the ledger, the study found that non believers still believe in absolute moral precepts – like, for example, that murder is wrong – at the same rate as the rest of the population. So atheism doesn’t send people spiralling into violent nihilism, which is nice. But the other thing – the belief in the supernatural – is counterintuitive. Thirty-five percent of all the Chinese atheists and half of their agnostics believe in astrology, for example, while 20 per cent of UK atheists believe that some things are “meant to be” and 30 per cent of Brazilian atheists still think there’s life after death and how the hell does that even work? Well over a quarter of the Brazilian atheists believe in “supernatural beings” – which, as the survey clarifies, means beings “such as angels, demons, ghosts or spirits.” The lesson of the study is that people’s beliefs are strongly influenced by the culture into which they are born, including the strength of said beliefs. For example, American atheists were the most certain their beliefs were correct – exactly like American believers – and Brazilians in general are of the opinion that supernatural creatures live and work among them. But seriously, fellow non-believers. If you think that the existence of god is unconvincing but that horoscopes seem super plausible, or that you’ll be doing anything much after you die, then you’re not applying the same rigorous fact-scalpel to one supernatural belief as another. And… um, isn’t that sort of the point?