Amore wrote:Themis,
Is this "Mormon Stats" not "Mormon Discussions"?
eAllusion,
Whether someone affiliates religiously once a year or every week, they affiliate.
Most people see enough value in some religious affiliation to claim it.
Of course most thinking adults don't believe everything their religion's theology says, but they still see some redeeming value in it to claim affiliation.
Having spent a number of years in one of your "very Jewish" communities (Philadelphia, or more properly, the "Main Line" suburbs of Philadelphia, including Narberth and Bryn Mawr), it sounds like you don't know very much about secular Jewish culture. Wikipedia tells me that secular Jews are about 50% of the Jewish population in the U.S. I had numerous personal friends, neighbors, and coworkers who would openly identify as both atheist and Jewish, and would take issue with your characterization that their claiming to be Jews had anything at all to do with religious affiliation. They view their affiliation to be cultural/ethnic, not religious in the slightest.
Philadelphia is also a "very Catholic" city, and in my experience claiming affiliation with Catholicism in Philadelphia is as much trying to signal something about one's childhood and upbringing (i.e., connotations of strict upbringing, education in a Catholic school) as it is about signaling one's religious beliefs. Many people I know say they are Catholic, and then add, "by which I mean a recovering Catholic." They don't put that last part on surveys.
I'm not saying that these "recovering Catholics" are all atheists--I know a lot who at least are into Jesus enough to go to mass a few times a year, even though they'll argue with just about anything that comes out of the Pope's mouth. I also know some personally though who have told me they don't believe any of it and just keep going because "poor old grandma just couldn't take it if I told her I wasn't catholic anymore" (this came out a lot when people would learn I was originally from Utah, assume I was Mormon, and I'd tell them how I was raised in that tradition but no longer considered myself part of it).
And so I come here. I know.