Christian Right Has Major Role in Hastening Decline of Religion in America

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http://www.alternet.org/belief/religion-america-great-decline-christian-right-has-major-role-hastening-it

Of those aged 18 to 35, three in 10 say they are not affiliated with any religion, while only half are “absolutely certain” a god exists. These are at or near the highest levels of religious disaffiliation recorded for any generation in the 25 years the Pew Research Center has been polling on these topics.

As encouraging as this data is for secular humanists, the actual numbers may be significantly higher, as columnist Tina Dupuy observes. “When it comes to self-reporting religious devotion Americans cannot be trusted. We under-estimate our calories, over-state our height, under-report our weight and when it comes to piety—we lie like a prayer rug.”

Every piece of social data suggests that those who favor faith and superstition over fact-based evidence will become the minority in this country by or before the end of this century. In fact, the number of Americans who do not believe in a deity doubled in the last decade of the previous century according to both the census of 2004 and the American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) of 2008, with religious non-belief in the U.S. rising from 8.2 percent in 1990 to 14.2 percent in 2001. In 2013, that number is now above 16 percent.

If current trends continue, the crossing point, whereby atheists, agnostics, and “nones” equals the number of Christians in this country, will be in the year 2062. If that gives you reason to celebrate, consider this: by the year 2130, the percentage of Americans who identify themselves as Christian will equal a little more than 1 percent. To put that into perspective, today roughly 1 percent of the population is Muslim.

[LuvNewcastle]

1. These statistics are interesting, but they only cover a short amount of time.

It's hard for me to believe that religion, which has been such a staple of human culture throughout our recorded history, would just fizzle out. I think it's more likely that we're in a transitional period, or a period of religious evolution.

I expect to see new religious thought come along -- beliefs that are more tolerant and ideas that are not in conflict with modern science but still try to speak to human spiritual needs. I imagine that it will be a combination of a variety of different traditions. I don't think human society will ever be totally done with religion.