The World’s Largest Coalition of Nontheists and Nontheist Communities!

tom arcaro Male elon, nc United States: Like

0 members like this; Share on Facebook

Share Twitter

Blog Posts (48)
Discussions (27)
Events
Groups (13)
Photos (5)
Photo Albums (1)
Videos (5)

Tom arcaro's Friends

View All

Music

Loading…

tom arcaro's Groups

Mr. Deity

535 members
139 Comments 43 Likes
The Bald-Headed Atheist …

42 members
6 Comments 0 Likes

HUMANE ATHEISTS

268 members
395 Comments 5 Likes
Black Freethought

507 members
354 Comments 42 Likes

Atheist Nexus Volunteers

208 members
41 Comments 5 Likes

View All

Welcome, tom arcaro!

Latest Activity

Idaho Spud commented on tom arcaro's blog post President Obama's inauguration speech and references to God

"I didn't listen to him because I can't stand listening to most pontificating politicians. However, I was surprised and very unhappy when I heard how much he referenced god. I had heard that in the past he had included atheists…"

Jan 23

Randall Smith left a comment for tom arcaro

"I have signed several "petitions" that let President Obama know I oppose his "god references", whenever and wherever. It hasn't done much good. I'm headed to your poll to vote "great discomfort"."

Jan 23

Earther commented on tom arcaro's blog post President Obama's inauguration speech and references to God

"Tom, I am interested if you know how often the president has mentioned the term separation of church and state during his presidency. I would like to know how active the people of the United States are in supporting and…"

Jan 22

tom arcaro commented on tom arcaro's blog post President Obama's inauguration speech and references to God

"Thanks! I have made the edit."

Jan 21

Grinning Cat commented on tom arcaro's blog post President Obama's inauguration speech and references to God

"This seems to work for that poll, asking "How do you feel about Obama's frequent mentioning of God in his inauguration speech?" http://polldaddy.com/poll/6845472/"

Jan 21

tom arcaro posted a blog post

President Obama's inauguration speech and references to God

President Obama's inauguration speech and references to God(This is also posted on servingatheists.org)I listened to President Obama's inauguration speech with interest today because I believe myself to be a responsible American citizen. How he frames his next term is important to me and all citizens of the United States and, indeed, to everyone around the world. But I also listened to his speech to see how often and in what ways he would invoke religion and make references to God. In short,…See More

Jan 21

4 Comments 0 Likes

Tom Sarbeck commented on tom arcaro's blog post Morality and Newtown.

"Okay, I blew some of what I wanted to say. Where I wrote "The people who ORIGINALLY ask such questions are religious leaders....", I intended to write "The people who ORIGINALLY make statements such as 'we must turn to God'…"

Jan 2

Tom Sarbeck commented on tom arcaro's blog post Morality and Newtown.

"Tom, I too thank you for providing info about these polls, but I clicked on the none of the above reply to "How do you feel about the 'we must turn to God' reaction after tragic events?" Who asks such questions? Note, I'm…"

Jan 2

Profile Information

My URL: http://facstaff.elon.edu/arcaro

About Me: I am currently doing research on "coming out in the Bible Belt" and invite you to contact me if you'd like to participate.

In the academic world, sabbaticals come around only once in seven years and each faculty person knows to invest that precious time away from the classroom effectively. In my case, when the time came to write my sabbatical proposal I had recently finished reading all of the books from the “Four Horseman of the Apocalypse”, namely Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and Daniel Dennett. I have been reading Dennett and Dawkins for years as I followed closely their work in evolutionary psychology (I have written several essays that touch on this topic; go the http://facstaff.elon,edu/arcaro), and when Dawkin’s The God Delusion came out I devoured it quickly, finding myself in agreement with much of what he said. During the semester I read his book I had an Intro to Sociology student who needed a research project, and she and I surveyed over 100 undergraduates using Dawkin’s scale of belief (he introduces in the first chapter). Those data indicated what I already knew from living North Carolina for the last 23 years: I was living in the Bible Belt. That short experience with researching people’s religious beliefs whet my appetite for more in depth data, and I began some preliminary reading of what other sociologists had written about being an atheist, particularly in the so-called Bible Belt where I lived. I found some reasonably interesting work, but none that sated my interest in the social consequences of coming out public as an atheist. As a bit more background, I have been working for a number of years on the issue of HIV and AIDS and have studied in some detail the problem of the social stigma attached to being HIV+. A good friend of mine, Anita Isaacs from Oshakati, Namibia, became HIV+ in the late 90’s and then came out public in November of 2002. This brave act changed her life and has defined her ever since. In no way do I want to say that being HIV+ is the same as being an atheist, but what I do argue is that the phenomena of stigmatization, described so well by the sociologist Irving Goffman in his classic book Stigma, is the same in both cases: both are devalued social statuses.
Immediately after the topic of my sabbatical research was published on our university web site I began getting calls and emails from colleagues who supported my work and wished me well. Many of them shared their own stories of being in the closet about their atheism and, in fact, the survey that I am asking you to take was written with the critical feedback of many colleagues both on campus and elsewhere. Two colleagues who also happen to be lesbians talked to me about the differences and similarities of dealing with the social responses to their sexuality and their atheism.
Why am I doing this research? As a tenured full professor I have no pressing need to add to my curriculum vita. My motivation for this research is to reach out to other atheists and provide them with an additional sounding board for their experiences. I want to describe the population of self-proclaimed atheists and ferret out some of the correlations between their gender, age, and other demographic variables with their responses to the array of questions that are posed in the survey. After the data is collected, I will openly share to summarized results both in the popular press (and, of course, appropriate web sites) and in sociological journals. I pledge to do my best to describe, analyze, summarize and present the data carefully and, importantly, to absolutely maintain the confidentiality of each participant.
Ultimately I hope that this survey and the publication of the results will, in some a small way, encourage more of us to more openly be who we are, atheists.
Finally, I want to publically thank Richard Haynes (“Brother Richard”) for working closely with me on the final versions of the survey and, more importantly, for all of his patience as we developed this project over the last five months. That he shares my vision and is willing to use his resources to maximize the exposure of this survey is a great gift to me and to the atheist community.

School/College/University: elon university

Profession: professor of sociology

Age Group: 51-60

City and State (For Member Searching): elon, nc

Country (For Member Searching): USA

Response to USA today article April 27, 2009

Folks,

Here is my response to this USA today article http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2009/04/post-christian-not-even-close.html

From my research (both quantitative and qualitative) and my personal experience I am certain that there is a fairly high percentage (10%? more?) of people who claim to believe in God and/or a church and are in actuality non-believers The vast majority of these are "religious by marriage", that is, their spouse is a believer and, rather than upset marriage and family, they choose to stay deeply closeted.

I agree, of course, that the religious "nones" are not all atheists, but at the same time assuming that those who are socially pressured into saying they believe really do is also suspect.

There are more non-believers in the US than the Trinity or Baylor studies indicate.

One reason many non-believers are in the closet is because of the stigmatization of atheism, and this is the topic of my current research. An online survey I conducted yielded 8200 responses, and over half those chose to include a story about their experiences as atheists

tom arcaro's Photos

Loading…

Tom arcaro's Blog

President Obama's inauguration speech and references to God

Posted on January 21, 2013 at 4:30pm 4 Comments 0 Likes

President Obama's inauguration speech and references to God

(This is also posted on servingatheists.org)

I listened to President Obama's inauguration speech with interest today because I believe myself to be a responsible American citizen. How he frames his next term is important to me and all citizens of the United States and, indeed, to everyone around the world. But I also listened to his speech to see how often and in what ways he would…

Continue

Morality and Newtown.

Posted on January 1, 2013 at 10:44am 5 Comments 1 Like

Here is the link to the ServingAtheists.org page with the "mini-poll" on morality:

http://blogs.elon.edu/servingatheists/?p=1350

One of the very first questions in the survey deals with morality: ”How do you view the morality of religious believers as compared to the morality of atheists?” To date, there have been over 7600 respondents to the survey and over 3300 have added comments after selecting their…

Continue

servingatheists.org

Posted on December 23, 2012 at 7:13pm 0 Comments 0 Likes

Though it was down for about 36 hours (!), the blog I am using to follow up on the "Better understanding the world of atheists" survey is now back in action. I have been a bit surprised -in a very positive way- how many people are visiting and interacting with the site. Several of the "mimi polls" that I have added to the site have generated quite a few responses. I encourage anyone -particularly those of you who took the time to critique the questions on the main survey (thank you!)- to…

Continue

We need a world with fewer guns, more reason and a balanced set of priorities.

Posted on December 15, 2012 at 3:27pm 3 Comments 2 Likes

We could use a world with more reason

Here in the US we are yet again reeling from another mass killing, this time in an elementary school. As I click around on Facebook, Twitter and on various blogs I find a wide array of responses to the tragedy in Connecticut, some more resonant with my feelings than others.

Two responses of which I took…

Continue

Mea culpa: critical question ommited from the “Understanding the world of atheists” survey

Posted on December 12, 2012 at 7:36am 0 Comments 1 Like

I should have had questions that would get at this on the main survey:

How can the atheist movement (to the extent there is one) be more gender inclusive in terms of its public face and its organizational leadership?

Please go the www.servingatheists.org and make your suggestions!

Comment Wall (32 comments)

You need to be a member of Atheist Nexus to add comments!

Join Atheist Nexus

At 7:33am on January 23, 2013, Randall Smith said…: I have signed several "petitions" that let President Obama know I oppose his "god references", whenever and wherever. It hasn't done much good. I'm headed to your poll to vote "great discomfort".

At 9:28pm on May 15, 2011, Younas Chowdhry said…: Dear friends,

You can follow me and my activities on twitter...

https://twitter.com/#!/YounasChowdhry

At 8:02pm on March 12, 2010, Heather said…: Thanks for the welcome :-) been here for a while, but I kind of just forgot about it and never visited.. poor AN...made a twitter page and a FB group for the greensboro atheists and I knew I had to stay more up to date with the community through sites other than reddit :P I try to stay active, but I'm just always so busy!

At 6:11pm on February 22, 2010, Brian Dalton said…: Hey Tom! Thanks for joining the Mr. Deity group and thanks for the kind words. You're right, Amy is completely out of my league. But I make up for it by being funny, fun, and a really good guy. I'd love to hear more about your work. It sounds fascinating! I'm going to check out some of your posts here. B

At 10:24am on January 20, 2010, Anwar Diamante said…: Hey tom,
Happy New Year!! How is the research going? I posted a blog that may interest you.

At 3:11pm on November 5, 2009, Edward Teach said…: Tom come join:

http://www.atheistnexus.org/group/ironhorseatheists

At 5:46pm on October 29, 2009, Anwar Diamante said…: That's awesome, Im so envious in a positive way...lol Of those phd holders. I am trying endlessly to get into a doctoral program. Its just really hard to do so. I am also looking into various fields i.e. Phd in Education with a focus in Higher ed pedagogy. Im also hearing that contrary to popular belief that distance/online is not a bad thing...So, not only is the process difficult but a bit intimidating...

At 6:50pm on October 23, 2009, Anwar Diamante said…: Oh wow, your students are so fortunate to have a progress professor!!! I wish I were just now doing my undergrad so I could take your class...Sociology is such a facinating subject. I gave my class a reading on W.E.B Dubois' "The Damnation of Women" article. So, I love what you guys do!!!

At 12:46pm on October 19, 2009, Dallas the Phallus said…: Thank you for joining HUMANE ATHEISTS.

At 9:26am on October 6, 2009, Ralph Dumain said…: Put out an announcement in the Black Freethought group. I have no particular connections in your designated area.