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Viliam comments on Open Thread Feb 16 - Feb 23, 2016 - Less Wrong Discussion
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What might be the cause of the perceived difference between the atheists/nontheists in Europe and in the USA?
I have the general feeling that the average atheist in the USA, when asked about religion, will be very open about believing religion to be either evil or ridiculously stupid, and will make at least a few remarks about how idiot those lunatics must be who believe that there are invisible people living on the top of the clouds. On the other hand, in Europe you are more likely to hear that "well, I'm not very religious", but many would culturally still identify as a Christian, and will held marriages, child naming ceremonies, funerals etc. in a church, and might even rarely, but occasionally go to church on a bigger festival (like Christmas) because it looks or feels nice.
I wonder why. I know much more Europeans than Americans, so it might be that the louder voices are better heard from a group I have less contact with, or it might be that because in the USA the Christian fundamentalists are louder than in Europe, so the atheist fundamentalists are also louder.
I'm fully aware that I based this observation mostly on people I have contact with, and in at least a small part being influenced by popular culture, but I don't know of any exhaustive research or survey comparing the cultural standpoint of nontheists specifically regarding the differences between Europe and the USA.
I guess that it is the religious freedom and religious diversity that keeps religions in USA more "alive". Religions compete with each other, try to convert each other's followers, keep the religious memes virulent. People work harder to signal belonging to their religion. And atheists living in the same culture work harder to signal their atheism.
In Europe historically you often had one mandatory religion per country. Without competition, priests got lazy and religion got boring. Some people lost their faith in religion, some people still believed in the religion but also saw the lazyness and corruption of the church, so you got many people who publicly identified as religious, but tried to do as little as possible about it. Those who identify as atheists are quite similar in behavior to the most lazy of those who identify as religious.
Metaphorically, the American religious landscape is a few separated shining colorful dots, atheism being one of them; the traditional European religious landscape is a gray bell curve, atheism being one of the ends. (The people you describe as "culturally still identifying as a Christian" are somewhere at 90% of the curve. There are also real atheists at the end, but they are fewer.)
I imagine that the increase of Islam might change this picture in the future; that the group of "lukewarm Christians" may decrease because (1) there will be attempts to convert them to Islam, and in response to that (2) the Christians may also wake up and start radicalizing their lazier members, and (3) some people will start identifying as atheists because they will dislike both of these options. Then, instead of the bell curve, we will have three separate groups.