Earlier today, the folks over at Pew Forum released a report entitled America’s Changing Religious Landscape. In that report, it is noted upfront that Christianity is on the wane:
[T]he major new survey of more than 35,000 Americans by the Pew Research Center finds that the percentage of adults (ages 18 and older) who describe themselves as Christians has dropped by nearly eight percentage points in just seven years, from 78.4% in an equally massive Pew Research survey in 2007 to 70.6% in 2014.
By contrast, the number of religiously unaffiliated are waxing:
Over the same period, the percentage of Americans who are religiously unaffiliated – describing themselves as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular” – has jumped more than six points, from 16.1% to 22.8%.
The problem with lumping together atheists (who realize all gods are made up) with agnostics (who suspect as much but cannot firmly commit) and those who claim “nothing in particular” is that it creates the false impression that rationalism is on the march, while in fact many of those in that last category may not have given much thought to the god problem at all. As it says on page 10 of the full report:
The unaffiliated are generally less religiously observant than people who identify with a religion. But not all religious “nones” are nonbelievers. In fact, many people who are unaffiliated with a religion believe in God, pray at least occasionally and think of themselves as spiritual people. Forthcoming reports will describe the Religious Landscape Study’s findings about the religious beliefs and practices of “nones” and other groups.
Bearing that in mind, what does the growth in unaffiliated Americans really look like?
Atheists have gained an estimated 1.5% of the population, agnostics picked up 1.6%, while the “nones” who may be spiritual but not religious have gained 3.7%. Put another way, apatheists (who don’t care enough about gods to either follow a particular creed or to work their way through to the truth of the matter) gained more than three times as many self-identified adherents as did atheists, who remain the only group to clearly understand that all gods are, in fact, human inventions.
Why is this important? The first step to freeing minds of bad ideas is getting them to realize there is an important question at stake, one worth thinking about. Dogmatic insistence on revealed divine truth is an enemy of progress, but at least dogmatists reliably insist that there is some truth of the matter to be had. Irreligious spiritualists and agnostics, not so much.
