Childhood religion versus current religion in the US

[ButterflyBlood]

Found this chart fascinating myself.

[virgogal]

1. What I find fascinating is that roughly half of the "none" category in

childhood found a religion in later life.

[darkstar3]

4. And yet the "none" category grows to more than double from childhood to current.

More people are going from "religion" to "none" than the other way around.

[Axle_techie]

19. there are much larger groups in the religion groups

than in the none group. it makes sense that there would be more numbers going into the none group than coming out of it.

[rug]

8. They grew out of their fairy tales.

[darkstar3]

9. That would be a funny reciprocal joke if it made any sense at all. n/t

[dmallind]

15. to be replaced by three times as many believers becoming "none"... NT

[Silent3]

2. Go NONE! :)

It would probably be way too messy to graph, but it would be interesting to know how many people, in which groups, wander away from how they were raised, but only temporarily, then end up right back where they started later in life.

[RandomThoughts]

3. Maybe Genes have aging timers in them because of that effect.

Could make a sci fi story out of that.

Genes have a timer at the end of the DNA strand that signals starting aging effect. Or something like that, forget all the details, something about cells dna dropping off bits after replicating, so that at some point aging occurs.

Thats why Dolly was born at age 9 when cloned.

On a side note, if that issue was solved would it be used for control, or distributed to everyone?

Just a story idea though.

[bananas]

5. The origin of the chart

http://www.internetmonk.com/archive/michael-bell-looking-at-the-pew-forums-changes-in-religious-affliliation-data

Michael Bell: Looking at the Pew Forum’s “Changes in Religious Affiliation” Data

May 6, 2009 by iMonk

Internet Monk First Officer Michael Bell returns with a look at some of the recent Pew Forum data on changes in American religious affiliation.

<snip>

A few days ago, The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life released the results of a survey entitled Faith in Flux: Changes in Religious Affiliation in the U.S. This was followup to their U.S. Religious Landscape Survey that they released last year.

I have been busy in the last week doing a bit of reverse engineering on the numbers to represent the shifts in belief as best and as clearly as I can. Here is the resulting chart. You can click on it to see the full sized version.

<snip>

The red color, or None, stands for those with no particular faith. The temptation is to think of this entire group as atheistic, but that is not the case. It is currently comprised of atheists (1.6% of total adult population up from 0.5%), agnostics (2.4% up from 0.2%), and those of no particular faith (12.1% up from 6.6%). I like to think of them as the “no God, don’t know, or don’t care group”. Of those who have no particular faith, roughly half of them (6.3%) would classify themselves as secular, and half (5.8%) would call themselves religious.

<snip>

Since "half...would call themselves religious", it's incorrect to think of them as the "no God, don't know, or don't care group".

[cleanhippie]

14. The best paragraph from this article goes unanswered

"One of my co-workers, who is an atheist, had this interesting question: “If 8.7% of Americans have switched from some type of religious belief to None is one generation, how many generations will it take for religion to be extinguished in America?” This question can’t really be answered, it assumes too much, that rates of change will remain constant, that all religious groups will have the same rate of loss, that help won’t come from other countries, and that God won’t intervene. But the fact that this sort of question has some sort of validity must be of concern to Christians everywhere."


Unless I skimmed over it, did this question get answered?

[mzteris]

6. are there any numbers to go with this?

And the Black Protestant one is interesting, isn't it? (Just read an article recently about how the Black Protestant religion is contributing towards keeping black women single. . .

[bananas]

7. See post #5

Embedded in that article is a link to the full report.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

20. Sounds interesting.

So black men think church is not manly, or what is the theory on that?

[Goblinmonger]

10. I don't get the "mainline" vs "catholic" distinction.

But that might just be me.

[marybourg]

11. "mainline" means mainline protestantism. nt

[BolivarianHero]

17. Yep...

Lutheran, Anglican/Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Methodist (save for Dumbya's congregation), United/Uniting, Reformed

[marybourg]

12. No black protestant ever left that faith? I know *that's* not true. nt.

[Silent3]

13. I think the dispersal lines we're probably just too skinny to show

The chunk of blue underneath the top blue bar is narrower than the blue above it, indicating reduction in numbers of followers before lines from other sections add in to boost the bottom blue figure. Notice the unfilled-in gray area at the bottom left of the top blue rectangle. That clearly should have some fine blue lines in there trailing off to None or to other denominations, even if they were left out by accident or due to round-off.

[cleanhippie]

16. I would really like to see the socio-economic demographics for each group.

I would like to know what the demographics are for those that leave their childhood group.

[dimbear]

18. The key point remains:

Far far and away, the greatest determinant of whether you're pointed heavenward or hellward is the accidental circumstances of your birth...............in the mind of the godfearing.

[daleo]

21. Good observation. n/t