Who Do You Say That I Am? Part 1

The problem of self-identifying labels and polling data (4 min)

We are all aware of the problems that come from attempts to make a person’s sex a matter of self-identification. Transgenderism has been exposed as extremely irrational largely because of a nonsensical belief that being a man or a woman is something that you can simply “identify” as, regardless of biological reality.

The problem is obvious: our bodies are fundamentally male or female. Without exception. Even the rare cases of intersex conditions don’t actually validate the views of transgenderism. This is because they are not actually fully hermaphroditic in the way transgender advocates claim. Besides the fact that intersex conditions are extremely rare, making them somewhat irrelevant, the majority of cases involve individuals where it can be determined that they are clearly of a specific sex. They just have features or body parts of the opposite sex, which are deformed or non-functional.

You never have a perfect hybrid of male and female sexual characteristics. An examination of these conditions reveals the person’s actual sex, and then the genetic, developmental, or birth defects that led to stunted or partial features of the opposite sex. Making it an obvious physical defect. Just as Down syndrome creates physiological and mental issues as a person grows up. There may be some cases where we don’t really know, but not only are these so rare as to be useless as a point of validation for transgenderism, they only mean we don’t know all the details. Fact is, how many of those who claim to be transgender actually have a legitimate intersex condition? We all know the answer is close to zero.

However, there is another problem that goes far beyond this specific instance of self-identification. It is the fact that self-identification is extremely unreliable, yet it is constantly used to make determinations of what people are. Completely ignoring all the issues that exist in such categorization. Examining the Pew Research data on the religious landscape of the United States provides an example of this. I pulled the data from the Religious Landscape Study, focusing on the 2023/2024 survey (found here).

We get some indicators of this by looking at a handful of the results. For example, we are told that 62% of US adults identify as Christian. However, this identification is rather problematic. First, we are categorizing people as Christians only through self-identification. The only thing that makes a person a “Christian” here is having selected either Protestant, Roman Catholic, Mormon, or Orthodox on the question “What is your present religion, if any?” This means a person is treated as a “Christian” merely because they claim to be a Christian.

All we have to do is look at the beliefs held by these self-identified “Christians” to get a glimpse of why this is an issue. Of these so-called Christians, 2% “Do not believe in God or universal spirit.” Which makes absolutely no sense. Putting aside the issue of what a “universal spirit” is, and how it muddies the question, you have people claiming to be Christian while simultaneously stating they don’t believe in God. Even the loosest definition of Christianity would include a belief in God. Besides this group, you also have a full 24% who state that they believe in God or a “universal spirit” but aren’t absolutely certain. While people have doubts, it’s questionable what answering this way means. It is hard to accurately call someone a Christian when one is uncertain about God’s existence. Even if we give the benefit of the doubt to people who may experience some kind of crisis of faith or struggle.

However, it gets more absurd than this. According to this same survey, you have 1% of atheists who claim to believe in God or a universal spirit with absolute certainty! You have a full 7% who claim to believe in God, just without being absolutely certain. The very basis of atheism is to reject the belief in a god or gods, yet somehow a significant portion of self-proclaimed atheists state a belief in God. If you look at the survey data from 2014 and 2007, this percentage is much higher. In 2007 there were 8% who claimed to have certainty in their belief in God and 13% claimed less than certain belief in God. How do you have almost 1 out of 5 self-proclaimed atheists saying they believe in God?

The contradictions and nonsense found in this survey are plentiful. Here is just a sample of the examples that can be found that cast doubt on the validity of these self-identifications. Such as 14% of “Christians” claiming the Bible is “Not too/Not at all important.” There are 8% of “Christians” saying that “The natural world is all there is.” You have 5% of atheists saying they believe in heaven and 4% who say they believe in hell. It isn’t restricted to Christians or atheists either, as 7% of “Muslims” say they do not believe in God. Or the 25% of Muslims who say the Bible is “extremely/very important” (not the Koran but the Bible). And of course, a full 52% of Buddhists who say they believe in heaven. Clearly, people are giving answers in ways that make little sense. Or at least they make no sense if we assume they are telling the truth.

What the data indicate is the fact that people are not honest about their self-identification. An atheist who believes in God is an impossibility. Either they are making a mistake in the survey, are ignorant of what any of this means, or are answering falsely on purpose. We can’t rule out the possibility of people deliberately providing troll responses because of anti-social contrarianism. But this cannot explain all the discrepancies we find in the data. It cannot explain everything we see and doesn’t at all explain why 57% of “Christians” say that homosexuality “should be accepted.” What is really going on is an expose of the unreliability of self-identifying labels.

People are ignorantly and falsely claiming a label for various reasons. Which is a phenomenon of serious importance. This initial article is the first in a multi-part essay where I describe the significant problems of self-identification. Especially when it is relied upon as a method of evaluating religious belief and categorization. This serves as the introduction to the problem. Next, we will cover the reasons a person might want to label themselves as something they really aren’t.

- Victoria Gratiae -