Smiley Face Atheists: Survey Finds Non-Believers to Be Upbeat

David Gibson
Politics Daily

Last time we looked in on America's unbelievers, they were registering a growing disappointment in President Obama's track record on their issues, with special concern that he was spending too much time on God talk and on placating the religiously inclined.

Now, however, comes word that could give the godless reason to smile -- if they aren't already: A new study of some 5,800 non-believers reports that contrary to popular conceptions of atheists as crabby misanthropes, they in fact tend to be as happy as their believing brethren, and are in fact more satisfied than people who are uncertain in their beliefs, or in their unbeliefs.

"This new survey reports that confident nonbelievers are more emotionally healthy with respect to 'fence sitters' or religious doubters, shows that 'spirituals' report less satisfaction with their lives than those who identify with other self-labels, and suggests that the common assumption that greater religiosity relates to greater happiness and life satisfaction is not quite true," says a release from the Center for Inquiry (CFI), a leading association of secularists, humanists, agnostics and atheists -- the range of "non-theists" who are often lumped in the polling category of "Nones," or those who reported no religious affiliation.

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