I understand that movement away from organised doctrine moves into a more abstract phase, I.e. new age, non-doctrinal spirituality and so forth before emerging into agnosticism or atheism. I haven’t done the research but my hypothesis would be that atheism is dependant upon the impact of religious doctrine at the outset. There is some literature out there somewhere about these migrations but I can’t remember who or what?

A study of the ebb and flow of religiosity would take volumes and still be incomplete due to great gaps in written history and the understanding of the events and societies at various times of cataclysmic changes in spirituality. On more recent histories, the French Revolution, where the God anointed Royals were put to the guillotine by the masses fed up with their religiously prescribed lot comes to mind. In the East, the Russian Orthodoxy is making somewhat of a comeback after decades of suppression under Communism (again, the people’s uprising against the supposedly God appointed Czar and royalty) and current leaderships embrassing of the religion for its own purposes. In the grand scheme of things, religion has always been used as a means to control the masses by those who lead them. The Christian faith and bible were not widespread until the Roman Cesar, I believe Constantine (too lazy to look it up) decided to consolidate various Christian texts into one which would give him the “Godly ordained” power to rule over his Empire. It was such a great rendition of these texts that it has held more or less ever since. Right sadly until this very present time, with Evangelicals belief that Trump was chosen by their God to lead the United States back into its God ordained place in the world.

There is a positive correlation that exists between atheism and GDP growth.

I don’t have any idea if the facts support my intuition on this, but I just assumed that the decline of traditional religion and the rise of alternative spirituality only reflected a superficial change due to the fact that a literal God-belief had fallen out of fashion, and people wanted to spend their Sunday mornings doing other things, but that their general tendency to shore up their worldview with superstition had not substantively changed.

If that intuition happens to be right, it might suggest the phenomenon is more specific to our culture and our time than to any universal pattern in history, but it’s only a guess on my part.

I heard that there’s an association between hardship and reliance on religion/superstition. Can’t remember where, though ?. Pinker? Dawkins? Fry?

"How common is it for societies to become predominantly deist before becoming predominantly atheist or agnostic?"

Has that ever been the case?

Really thoughtful question. I don’t know the answer, but will hang around to see if anybody else does!