Atheists identified as America’s most distrusted minority

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It is of interest that the East and West coasts where the largest concentrations of institutes of higher education are located are more accepting.

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Not just that, but the US coasts tend to have a much greater ethnic and cultural diversity; just the cities of New York and Los Angeles alone probably represent much of the US's mixing of these elements of society.Another intellectual disconnect that I find fascinating is the obvious mistake these people are making about who is morally bankrupt in the US.I mean, if they just thought for a minute...1) They believe that the us is in a moral decline.2) This has coincided with an increse in Fundamentalist Christianity3) The politicians who seem to be the most connected with Fundies also seem to be the most corrupt.4) The corporate robber barons who are shockingly amoral are certainly not Athiests...

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A telephone sampling of 2000 households is hardly the basis for drawing conclusions about America at large.

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If it is done correctly, 2000 households is a perfectly valid sample size.

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The sentence immediately following the sentence you quoted was intended to get at the point "if it is done correctly". I thought the article's mentioning of numbers was pointless, without any discussion of methodology. 2000 households where? When? That was what I was intending to criticize. And the fact that it was a telephone survey did not help.

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Do you really believe that a the authors of a published study from a major university's sociology department are going to be ignorant of these things?Why not reserve judgement and criticize the actual paper instead of criticizing strawmen of your own construction?

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That said, I actually do not believe 2000 is enough of a sample size to properly draw conclusions about a population of over 400 million spread in reality over the entire world.

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So, you are an expert statictician now, as well?Goodness, if you were to publish your revolutionary statistical theory it would turn the field on it's head.I strongly encourage you to do so.This message has been edited by schrafinator, 03-31-2006 12:01 PM

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It'll be in the april issue of the american psychological review.

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I think it's actually in the American Sociological Review.