Anti-religion agenda among social media users

Andrew Barker embodies the average Digg user: a white male in his 20s, tech savvy, with a sense of humor that often pushes boundaries into the taboo. You can find him browsing the social news website a couple times a day, but you won't see him at a church, synagogue or mosque.

The 27-year-old from Mishawaka, Ind., abandoned organized religion long ago and now describes himself as agnostic. For him, time spent in the house of Digg is not unlike a Sunday church gathering. Groups of like-minded individuals share gossip and stories, and they discuss such topics as politics, sports and, yes, even religion.

But you won't find many links to Bible studies on the front page of Digg -- unless it's about the absurdity of taking Scripture literally. A 2-year-old survey of Digg users showed a significant concentration of atheists and agnostics. Because Digg's content is submitted and voted on by the users, the stories promoted to the website's homepage reflect the audience.

Although Barker reads Digg regularly, he doesn't submit links very often. But he had a big hit with a picture he posted of a child's coloring book showing Jesus riding a dinosaur. "I found it, and thought, 'God, that's such a hilarious image,'" Barker said. "Digg takes everything religious so lightheartedly."

Poking fun at evangelical Christians, Catholics, creationists, the image of Jesus Christ and, well, anything remotely associated with religion is ...

... commonplace on the website. An image, titled "The Incredible Jesuc Car: I'm Afraid Of Americans," was voted to the Digg homepage a few days ago. The photo shows a Toyota, with the license plate "Jesuc," blanketed in bumper stickers promoting Christianity, the Republican presidential ticket and anti-gay marriage propositions.

Another image, a clipping from an Alaskan newspaper's Letters to the Editor section that's criticizing atheists, hit the Digg homepage the same day as "Jesuc Car." (A previous version of this post said the newspaper was from Arkansas.) It's already in the top 10 most popular stories of the week -- an impressive feat when considering the other nine stories revolve around the presidential election.

And Tuesday night, a popular item on Digg was news that Elizabeth Dole, whom Digg users criticized for calling her opponent "godless," was defeated by Kay Hagan for the North Carolina Senate seat. Users celebrated in the story's comments section, and one user wrote, "Score one for the Godless Americans!"

Digg isn't exactly religion-friendly, so it naturally doesn't attract a very spiritual crowd. "If you were into religion and you went to that site, and you thought that you weren't connecting with anyone, then you wouldn't spend a lot of time there," said Diane Winston, professor of media and religion at the University of Southern California.

Zak Madden, a 16-year-old atheist from Battle Ground, Wash., submitted a picture to Digg last week of a Blu-Ray box for a film called "Jesus Christ: Vampire Hunter." It got more than 1,000 votes, called "diggs," from users. "Most Diggers aren't very religious and love comedy so it seemed natural that they would enjoy this," Madden said in an e-mail.

Madden figures that more than half of the site's users don't actively practice religion, but says that number could be skewed by a vocal minority. "There may be more religious diggers than I am guessing, but those who are religious usually aren't very open about it," he wrote.

Madden says he found the "Vampire Hunter" graphic on a similar website called Reddit. The audience is much the same, and content critical of religion regularly makes it to Reddit's homepage as well.

YouTube also has its atheist niche. A search for "atheist" yields 124,000 results, and several of those videos have been watched hundreds of thousands of times. Granted, a search for "Christianity" returns 862,000, but many of those contain content critical of the religion.

Micki Krimmel, a.k.a. Mickipedia, a popular Twitter personality, says she attributes a part of her Internet fame to her YouTube videos about atheism. "I made a series of videos that got really popular on YouTube and that generated recognition [among] a different group -- apparently there is a big atheist community on YouTube," she said in an instant message conversation.

Social networks also exist for atheists, including Atheist Passions and Richard Dawkins.net.

Although atheist material and content critical of religion might have a large following on these mainstream websites, just as many websites exist on the Web for religious discussions, said Winston, the USC professor. ShoutLife is one Christian social network with about 140,000 registered users. Christian.com, Xianz, Your Christian Space and Holypal are a few popular alternatives. There's one for every major religion -- and atheism.

"Just as religious people want to convert people to their perspective, atheist people want to convert people to their point of view," Winston said. "The irony here is that atheism is a form of religion. You're still in something."

The Internet isn't killing religion. In fact, Winston says more Americans attend church today -- about 60% -- than in the past. "People have a mistaken notion of history that people used to be more religious," she said.

The Web merely acts as the megaphone for any message, whether that be for or against religion, to help it reach the masses. "The Internet has democratized media to a form almost unprecedented," Winston said. "So, of course you're going to see things that you never saw before -- like Jesus riding on a dinosaur."

-- Mark Milian

Photo: Religion Meets Technology. Credit: RinzeWind via Flickr

Comments

[Atheist]

If you look at the data from all polls, you find that between 10 and 20 percent of people in the US do not believe in god(s). They are atheists. The percentage grows each year. Eventually atheists will be the majority. The god-deluded had better hope that atheists treat them better than how they've treated the atheists

[Dave]

I don't think Digg is anti-religion its just pro-logic. Diggers don't hate on religion, we just hate when people use religion to interfere in the liberty of others. Example: gay marriage; a religious person see a religious issue, a Digger sees a question of freedom for a social minority.

[George]

The Internet isn't killing religion. In fact, Winston says more Americans attend church today -- about 60% -- than in the past.

---

Wrong.

Only about 20% attend Sunday service.

[Andrew]

Religion is "the belief and worship of a superhuman power" according to the dictionary, so therefore atheism is surely NOT a religion, rather the rejection of it. The difference between atheism and religion comes down to wether you believe in a piece of ancient literature, or modern science. There not compatible.

[Gordon Hill]

Atheism is faith based just like christianity!
Christians have faith there is a god and
Atheists have faith that there is no god!

Neither side as any "EVIDENCE" to back it up.

[Mark]

Thanks to people like Richard Dawkins those of us who think critically have been inspired to stop treating religion like it cannot be criticized. Religion doesn't deserve any special treatment, and those of us that see it in its true light are no longer afraid to say so.

[Michael]

So dave, where are you getting these numbers? Are you expecting people to just have "fath" in your numbers that 20% attend Sunday service?

[Zach]

Interesting how religious belief goes down as access to information goes up

[Arielle]

Small nitpick - the newspaper clipping was from Alaska (AK), not Arkansas (AR). Plus, it was a joke.

[ross]

Digg is VERY anti-religion. People are VERY hostile towards it. It's one thing to ignore or even mock light-heartedly, but the anti-God, anti-Christian comments I've read on there are extremely rude and angry.

"The irony here is that atheism is a form of religion. You're still in something."

Atheism is not a religion...

[Joe the Hedge Fund Manager]

@Gordon Hill

Don't equate the two positions. If you make a claim, you have to back it up with evidence. Atheists don't make any claims, but they will listen to you if you bring facts and logical thinking.

[Eric W]

We diggers like reality, use logic and behave rationally.

If that's anti-religion, then so be it.

"Facts have liberal bias" - Colbert

[J]

Theists have faith, A-Theists don't.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theism

Not beleiving in God isn't the same thing as beleiving there is no God.

All children are inherently born Atheists, because they aren't theists. They haven't been indoctrinated into their parents religion, and aren't likely to become theists for many years (until they are old enough to really comprehend)

Until you choose to take up the mantle of faith you are an Atheist. Because of this, Atheists are a very, very broad range of people, as Atheists is default.

To call Atheism a religion is like calling unregistered voters a political party.

[Rick Wagner]

I guess I'll side with Copernicus, Newton, Einstein, etc. in believing.

+1 for educated believers.

;)

Rick

[Carl hueske]

"YouTube also has its atheist niche. A search for "atheist" yields 124,000 results, and several of those videos have been watched hundreds of thousands of times. Granted, a search for "Christianity" returns 862,000, but many of those contain content critical of the religion."

I see what you did there. Of the 124,000 Atheist results, none of those could possibly be critical of Atheism..!

[mickey733]

... i think there are less popular religion-advocating websites out there because of the vast majority of issues and information that happen to contradict someone's particular belief (whether it be hindu, islam, etc...); many closed-minded interpreters of religion would hate that such "blasphemy" is within a click away (generally speaking).... and that they have no way of censoring it...

i am, however, a nondenominational christian who is actually an engineer/scientist working at JPL.... however, i believe that god gave us free will and a brain better than any other being/animal out there for a reason... .so i believe in thinking freely and making logical, stepwise decisions.... as issues evolve, so must we... if god wanted us to be sheep, he would have made us that way...

[Doug]

Digg is neither pro or anti religion. Digg allows a wide range of people to voice their opinions, unlike the LA Times and mainstream media.

[novenator]

I wish we could Digg up some of these comments

[Terry A. Davis]

You have no idea how funny these people who think they're smarter than average is. God does that on purpose -- hates arrogant people and drives them out of his churches. Ever heard of a "stumbling block"? It's a filter mechanism. One thing you know about God is He doesn't care much if everybody believes in Him.

Here's God...
recognised pressure scratch closed blasphemous Beware

[Josh]

Ummm...Doug, didn't you just have an opinionated voice on a "mainstream media" website?

[Zach]

"Atheism is faith based just like christianity!
Christians have faith there is a god and
Atheists have faith that there is no god!

Neither side as any "EVIDENCE" to back it up."

Ok, let's say I tell you leprechauns exist. You probably won't believe me. Would you call your belief that leprechauns don't exist "faith"? No, you'd probably call it "reasonable belief". Now replace "leprechauns" with "God".

Conclusion, until we have evidence that there IS a god, the reasonable position is to not believe it. For more info, Google "burden of proof fallacy".

[Adam]

Gordon: To not believe in random things with no evidence simply requires a rational mind. I'm sure there are plenty of things you don't believe. I assume you don't believe the sun will rise purple tomorrow. Does that require "faith" on your part? Of course not. When you tell someone what they should believe, it's pretty annoying. But when you try to speak for atheists, telling them what they DO and DON'T believe, and endow them with your "faith" and "religion", that's a higher level of arrogance. Is there some reason you can't stick to speaking for yourself?

[Bob Roberts]

--
Atheism is as much a religion as not collecting stamps is a hobby.

[Tim]

Einstein was NOT a theist! Please do some research and don't insult the man. He just used the word "god" as a metaphor for the universe.

Newton and Copernicus were products of their time. Theology was all around them, it was very difficult to escape from the mental box.

I personally take it as very encouraging that the new generation is feeling more and more comfortable to shed religion. I'm hoping by the middle of this century, atheists/agnostics will finally outnumber the religious, and we can really start shedding our superstitious legacy.