Over at Atheist Revolution, Jack Vance remains skeptical of how quickly the irreligious “nones” are edging out affiliated religious believers in the United States. As best as I can tell, the answer is around 5% growth per decade, ever since (roughly) AOL for DOS was released. Here is the chart, via Michael Hout of NYU and Claude Fischer of UC Berkeley:
(My apologies for the low resolution.)
Here is the event transcript wherein they explain that their original model was overly optimistic about the rate at which the nones are supplanting people of faith:
. . .what the new estimates provide is, first of all, an earlier starting point and, most importantly, a much more gradual trend over time than we saw in the other one, and that gradual trend is one of the fingerprints of generational trend and is – generational change and generational succession – and is therefore part of the basis for our decision that – or our estimate that the generational trend accounts for about 60%, rather than our previous estimate of 40% of the secular trend over time.
Of course, there is every chance that the new trendline will also level off after a time, as the level of irreligiousity exhibited by the youngest age cohort (so-called “millenials” hover around 25% or so) becomes the new normal. Then again, maybe we’ll keep on going and become more like Europe.
Your thoughts?
