Warning: The following post is rank speculation and contains few, if any, verifiable facts.
One day I was out in a park taking photos and struck up a conversation with a man. After a lengthy conversation, he invited me out to a place a few blocks away for dinner and drinks. Several times he mentioned that he liked smart women in a context that I understood to imply that he thought I was smart and that he liked me. After a few drinks he said, “I feel like I’m pushing my luck to even ask, but you wouldn’t happen to be an atheist?” I said, “Yes,” and he looked up as if to thank ceiling cat.
It’s not surprising that he should thank ceiling cat for his good fortune. Received wisdom has it that among atheists men outnumber women two to one.
Wow – here’s one of those days when I feel lucky to be a blogger not a legit writer. My original intent was to start with an introductory anecdote, make the statement that atheist men significantly outnumber atheist women, speculate wildly on why that would be the case and finish up with the conclusion of my anecdote. So I was trying to find a good, recent source with a gender breakdown of atheists in the United States. I’ve been poking around for about two hours now. This post is taking significantly longer than I had intended due to this rather big hiccup. If anyone has a good, reliable source for the notion that the number of men who don’t believe in any divine being is actually double that of women in the United States, please give me a source. Until then, I will have to wait for another day to finish my post.
Sorry folks.
As for the end of the anecdote, let’s just say that I fished around on the internet for this image: underwear.