These could be the end times for religion in the West. We’re entering a new Secular Age when magical supernatural beliefs cannot be swallowed by educated people.
Religion is fading in America, as it has done in most Western democracies. Dozens of surveys find identical evidence: Fewer American adults, especially those under 30, attend church — or even belong to a church. They tell interviewers their religion is “none.” They ignore faith.
Since 1990, the “Nones” have exploded rapidly as a sociological phenomenon — from 10 percent of U.S. adults to 15 percent to 20 percent. Now we’ve climbed to 25 percent, according to a 2016 survey by the Public Religion Research Institute. That makes us the nation’s largest faith category, outstripping Catholics (21 percent) and white evangelicals (16 percent). We seem on a trajectory to become an outright majority. America is following the secular path of Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan, New Zealand and other places. The Secular Age is snowballing. Among young adult Americans, the “none” rate is nearly 40 percent, which means the coming generation will be still more secular.
Various explanations for the social transformation are postulated: The internet exposes young people to a wide array of ideas and practices that undercut old-time beliefs. Family breakdown severs traditional participation in congregations. The young have grown cynical about authority of all types. Fundamentalist hostility to gays and abortion has soured tolerant-minded Americans. Clergy child-molesting scandals have scuttled church claims to moral superiority. Faith-based suicide bombings and other religious murders horrify normal folks.
All those factors undoubtedly play a role. But I want to offer a simpler explanation: In the scientific 21st century, it’s less plausible to believe in invisible gods, devils, heavens, hells, angels, demons — plus virgin births, resurrections, miracles, messiahs, prophecies, faith-healings, visions, incarnations, divine visitations and other supernatural claims. Magical thinking is suspect and ludicrous. It’s not for intelligent, educated people.
Significantly, the PRRI study found that the foremost reason young people gave for leaving religion is this clincher: They stopped believing miraculous church dogmas.
Maybe young people discern that it’s dishonest to claim to know supernatural things that are unknowable. The church explanation — that Planet Earth is a testing place to screen humans for a future heaven or hell — is a silly conjecture with no evidence of any sort, except ancient scriptures. No wonder that today’s Americans, raised in a scientific-minded era, cannot swallow it.
I’m a longtime newspaperman in Appalachia’s Bible Belt. I’ve watched the retreat of religion for six decades. Back in the 1950s, church-based laws were powerful. Even writing about sex was illegal. In 1956, our Republican mayor sent police to raid bookstores selling Peyton Place. Gradually, all those faith-based taboos vanished from society. Religion lost its power — even before the upsurge of “Nones.”
In 2016, National Geographic online bannered a story titled: “The world’s newest major religion: no religion.” The revered magazine said:
There have long been predictions that religion would fade from relevancy as the world modernizes, but all the recent surveys are finding that it’s happening startlingly fast. France will have a majority secular population soon. So will the Netherlands and New Zealand. The United Kingdom and Australia will soon lose Christian majorities. Religion is rapidly becoming less important than it’s ever been.
Europe — where for centuries people were killed over religion — decided after World War II that religion is inconsequential. Churchgoing collapsed. Pope Benedict XVI complained: “Europe has developed a culture that, in a manner unknown now to humanity, excludes God from the public conscience.” He protested the new European attitude of “disdaining God completely.” Newspaper columnist George Will called the Vatican “109 acres of faith in a European sea of unbelief.”
The secular trend is especially advanced in Scandinavia. Pitzer College sociologist Phil Zuckerman spent months interviewing Danes and Swedes and wrote a book titled Society Without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us About Contentment. He says that godless Scandinavians have happy lives in healthy societies with much less crime and other social evils when compared to religious cultures.
Supernatural religion is dying in the West. It took humanity several millennia to reach the Secular Age. Now it’s blossoming spectacularly.
This column is adapted from a piece that originally ran in the May-August 2017 issue of The Truth Seeker.
I see these numbers all the time, and I don’t know about the rest of the world but here in East Tennessee it’s very unusual to find a secular person. If you meet anyone and talk to them for 10 minutes, they’ll start throwing out religious buzz words.
I hope the numbers are correct, but I think they may be a little off.
Imagine no religion 🌬❤❤❤
It's easy if you try.
I think that dogmatic religion will not die unless there's something to replace it and those nones band together, with one powerful voice, to kill it. Brights.com can be just such a voice but atheists would rather be technically right and have zero power. Therefore, dogmatic religion will probably recoup and make a come back (as it did under Pope John Paul).
I have no interest in religion- and I also have no interest in the religion/fixation of atheism. I have volunteered out of churches, where most of the volunteers were secular- and I will, at times, continue to volunteer. The Mennonites use their own money, from their stores, to provide for food and water projects around the world. Back before slavery was abolished the Quakers were housing runaway slaves in Philadelphia. I am not talking about the likes of "Mommy Theresa", whose objective was to make family poverty even worse, but there have been Catholics who have given their lives for justice. One priest went to the gas chambers with his Jewish orphans, so they would not be frightened.
I couldn't believe it; a few days ago, I got a letter in the mail from a Jehovah Witness. I do not know, or associate with fools like this. This LIT my fire! I want to know, if these ass holes have nothing better to do with their time than to celebrate their stupidity.
People going into a gas chamber should be afraid. That's an appropriate emotion. If we don't end religion then I don't care if humanity survives at all. We are a willfully ignorant species of zero value.
@rainmanjr NO ONE should be going into gas chambers----- except those who would operate such places. I have zero interest in anyone who wants to believe in fairy tales---- their business. When they indoctrinate children into believing science is fiction, and walking on water is real, along with all the other bull shit--- time to put a stop to that!
There can be no doubt that the rapid developments in technology in the past two decades has contributed to the decline in the ‘pie in the sky’ view that is promoted in most of the world’s religions. A promise of a rewards at some unknown postmortem date is repugnant to rational people. I have always considered the carrot and stick approach to be the worst and lowest form of education.
Agreed! One hundred per cent!
Encouraging trend for "Western" societies. I hate to be a Debbie Downer, but I'm still concerned about the growth of Christianity and Islam and religious extremism in the rest of the world (in large part because of differential birthrates). But good news on any front is still welcome.
A note of caution, sorry.
Another reason for religion being so strong in the US for so long, is perhaps because of the perceived, though false, connection between atheism and communism. Which may have created a a large but quite artificial and quite fragile bubble of support for religion, which did not exist in most countries. With the rapid discrediting of communism as an ideology in most of the educated world, and the perceived, though false, end to the cold war, that bubble may vanish rapidly, bringing the US quite quickly back into line with the rest of the developed world.
Which means sadly, that the rapid decline in the US may not last. After a while, religion will still continue to decline, but only at much the same rate as it does in the rest of the educated western world.
Evangeloonies and the religious will really love this!! (Sarcasm).
There’s no turning back now.
Thank you for sharing this. It’s great news, and I hope the trend continues to move at a fast pace! We really need to do away with the magical thinking so we can hopefully save our planet.
Yes, but... I recall research done on modernizing countries that showed the populace turned to conservatism as a rejection of technology. This was before the internet, so it may be harder to bury one's head in the sand. I believe this research received a pejorative award from Senator Proxmire, but it proved all too accurate in essentially predicting the revolution in Iran.
In our own case, the US has been much more religious than other Western countries, so it has farther to go. My guess is we're approaching the sharpest slope in the change curve, and that's good. However, the shift could be jarring to many.
Hooray! Thanks for posting this great news. My favorite part:
In the scientific 21st century, it’s less plausible to believe in invisible gods, devils, heavens, hells, angels, demons — plus virgin births, resurrections, miracles, messiahs, prophecies, faith-healings, visions, incarnations, divine visitations and other supernatural claims. Magical thinking is suspect and ludicrous. It’s not for intelligent, educated people.
Significantly, the PRRI study found that the foremost reason young people gave for leaving religion is this clincher: They stopped believing miraculous church dogmas.
IDK about this. I'm a HUGE fan of Voodoo
Sensing this, the theocrats are redoubling their efforts to reverse the tide of history that has turned against them. So no time for complacent self-satisfaction. Read a book like “The Power Worshippers” in order to get a clearer idea of what we’re up against.
Absolutely. They are gaining power here
TLDRA!
Factual history, science, and good ole common sense is putting religion where it belongs...... In the dustbin of history