cover image Atheists: A Groundbreaking Study of America's Nonbelievers

Atheists: A Groundbreaking Study of America's Nonbelievers

Bruce E. Hunsberger, Bob Altemeyer, . . Prometheus, $20 (159pp) ISBN 978-1-59102-413-2

This slender, conversational, but methodologically sound treatise on the inner world of atheists will pleasantly surprise readers accustomed to the soporific "academese" of most sociological studies. Altemeyer and (the late) Hunsberger have conducted some of the first surveys of atheists, a decided minority within a very religious United States. The book is based primarily on surveys of "active" atheists (i.e., members of atheist clubs in the San Francisco Bay Area, Alabama and Idaho), as well as on a comparison group of Canadian parents (who happened to have children in the authors' psychology classes at the University of Manitoba). In previous studies, atheists have been lumped together with "the nonreligious" who might include unaffiliated or "non-church-attending" theists. Here, self-described atheists finally get their day, as perhaps they should since one of the growing religious categories in the General Social Survey of Americans is "None." The study is limited in scope, but the flaws are so forthrightly acknowledged and the writing is so fresh, honest, compelling and entertaining that it is bound to become an important launching point for more studies of what makes atheists tick. (June)