For the purposes of this resolve I'm talking about the US here. Also, a great deal of what I'm going to say is pure speculation, I admit that.

On most polls the percentage of people of who report themselves as Atheist is between 3 and 9 percent. That would seem to suggest the belief in God in this country is extremely strong, and maybe it is. But my contention is that it is not anywhere near as strong as it appears to be. I think that a very large number (possibly even a majority) of Americans fall into one of the following three categories.

1. People who actually are Atheists but, due to the stigma attached to non-belief pretend to believe. I'm not talking about people who are pretending to themselves that they believe, this category is for people who in their own minds have decided that God probably does not exist but who hide that fact from others. Some of these people go to church regularly, some even serve as leaders in their churches. There's no way to count these people, but I think the number is probably surprisingly large.

2. People who don't know. Obviously, this would include Agnostics, but I'm also talking about people who just don't give a damn. An Agnostic has at least thought about the question of God's existence enough to come to the conclusion that it is impossible to know, but a lot of the people in this category don't care enough about the issue to give it even that much thought. Some of these people go to church when it's expected of them, but most are completely secular. They don't talk about religion and give it little or no thought.

3. People who believe but whose belief is superficial. These are the Pascal's Wager people. They profess belief, they may even tell themselves and others that their faith is 'unshakeable' or 'certain', but in truth they are just covering their bets. Deep down they don't buy it, their actions speak louder than their words.

Does Ted Haggard frequent a male prostitute and buy crystal meth from him if he thinks that God is watching and that the consequences are eternal damnation? Hell, he wouldn't do that if he thought his wife had a camera on him, and the consequences of her knowing are a lot less than of God knowing. He tells himself that he believes in God and Hell, and I'm sure that he worries that it may be true, but if he really believed it on the gut level, he couldn't do the things he did. I think that it is possible that this category includes the majority of Christians.