So in replying to a recent question, I commented how living in Southern California is pretty good for atheists as we do have a few Meetup groups to chose from, if you are in LA they have a Sunday Assembly that meets once a month, and there are plenty of Unitarian churches around if you need that sort of thing. So it is pretty cosmopolitan here.
I was wondering where others thought are the best places for atheists in the USA and why?
I personally think it's Seattle as I live here and know very few Christians. Also barely anybody in my social circle talks about their religious lives. I just went to Public Religion Research Institute's (PRRI) website and used their American Values Atlas to search for statistics and here are my findings:
Top Ten Least Religious Cities (2016 Data)
Top Ten Least Religious States (2016 Data)
PRRI has some very useful data and their American Value Atlas is an amazing interactive online map. To see the full sets of data:
<a href="http://ava.prri.org/#religious/2016/States/religion/16" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" class="forumlink">[ava.prri.org]
Check "Religious Affiliation" and select "Religious Tradition" and you can see the breakdowns of religious (by religion) and non-religious residents by state and city.
Great info. Thanks. Surprised to see Los Angeles on the top list but not California on the list of States.
There is a correlation between education and rejection of religion. I am from Ann Arbor, MI and we always rank as one of the most educated cities. And like Portland, extremely liberal. I would bet that we have a relatively high proportion of anti-theists.
If you are talking cities, then Portland Oregon. They have, or at least admit to, the least amount of church attendance of any major city in the U.S.
I imagine away from people out in the middle of the wilderness would be the actual most atheist place in the U.S.
I'm a bit of a wilderness junkie, and live adjacent to the Santa Fe National Forest in a very sparsely populated county. There are enough open minded people out here, but like most other national parks and wilderness areas I've visited, the surrounding community here is very rural. I do find that many people who visit the wilderness areas are very open minded and willing to have reasonable discussions on many topics.