From Fox News:
Fifteen percent of respondents said they had no religion, an increase from 14.2 percent in 2001 and 8.2 percent in 1990, according to the American Religious Identification Survey.
Northern New England surpassed the Pacific Northwest as the least religious region, with Vermont reporting the highest share of those claiming no religion, at 34 percent. Still, the study found that the numbers of Americans with no religion rose in every state.
"No other religious bloc has kept such a pace in every state," the study's authors said.
In the Northeast, self-identified Catholics made up 36 percent of adults last year, down from 43 percent in 1990. At the same time, however, Catholics grew to about one-third of the adult population in California and Texas, and one-quarter of Floridians, largely due to Latino immigration, according to the research.
Nationally, Catholics remain the largest religious group, with 57 million people saying they belong to the church. The tradition gained 11 million followers since 1990, but its share of the population fell by about a percentage point to 25 percent.
Christians who aren't Catholic also are a declining segment of the country.
In 2008, Christians comprised 76 percent of U.S. adults, compared to about 77 percent in 2001 and about 86 percent in 1990. Researchers said the dwindling ranks of mainline Protestants, including Methodists, Lutherans and Episcopalians, largely explains the shift. Over the last seven years, mainline Protestants dropped from just over 17 percent to 12.9 percent of the population.
The report from The Program on Public Values at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., surveyed 54,461 adults in English or Spanish from February through November of last year. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 0.5 percentage points. The findings are part of a series of studies on American religion by the program that will later look more closely at reasons behind the trends.
The current survey, being released Monday, found traditional organized religion playing less of a role in many lives. Thirty percent of married couples did not have a religious wedding ceremony and 27 percent of respondents said they did not want a religious funeral.
5 comments:
Hey, I just stumbled across your blog. It's interesting. Are you opposed to personal forms (Christ-man relationship) of Christian faith or simply corporate worship?
I'm assuming that the focus of this blog is to discredit the christian belief of heaven and hell. Do you personally believe that a soul that lives on? If not, why would this be something to spend your time on?
Will this improve society to discourage people from faith? It would be interesting to look at various faith-less societies to see how well this works. Maybe the old Soviet block or China.
I suppose, with religion being on the decline (due to the failure of faith) we can expect good things to come eh?
Hi Jay, I suggest you study Scientology to see how easy it is to feed bullshit to a willing listener.
The Bible is not proof. The Bible is only proof that clergy of one form or another have been playing this game for thousands of years. Reality is not what our wishful thinking might make us want to believe. You don't get to vote on it, and you don't get to make shit up wholesale, no matter if you're a dupe, or a pathological liar. Dead is dead, and 5-21st Century idealized Jesus is imaginary.
"Will this improve society to discourage people from faith?"
It probably won't make much difference. There will always be stupid, greedy bastards of all stripe. Whether they wrap themselves in sack cloth, the flag, or some other form of "justification" for their immoral acts, they will commit them just the same.
One more time: Communism suppresses Religion because Religion is recognized as a competing scam, and Totalitarian Communism brooks no competition, much like the Taliban. A cult is a cult. I'm off to cover myself in blue mud now. See you later.
Hi Jay S,
Lets see if I can answer your questions.
Hey, I just stumbled across your blog. It's interesting. Are you opposed to personal forms (Christ-man relationship) of Christian faith or simply corporate worship?
The premise of the blog at the top of the page explains what exactly KTA is opposed to. It reads: "The concept of an afterlife is inhumane and immoral. Belief in the continuation of your "soul" or consciousness after death is wishful thinking. Belief in an afterlife devalues the one life that actually exists: this one."
So I guess you could say that this blog is opposed to the personal forms and corporate forms of Christian faith, and indeed all faiths.
I'm assuming that the focus of this blog is to discredit the christian belief of heaven and hell.
That is not quite correct. First of all, the concepts of heaven and hell are not "Christian" in origin. Christianity simply copied these concepts from previous faiths. This blog is against all forms of afterlife belief from all religions, including heaven and hell in all their forms, and other silly notions like reincarnation.
Do you personally believe that a soul that lives on? If not, why would this be something to spend your time on?
I do not believe that the soul personally lives on beyond the bodily death. And the reason I spend time on this is similar to the reason that peace advocates spend their time protesting against warfare.
Will this improve society to discourage people from faith?
Most definitely.
It would be interesting to look at various faith-less societies to see how well this works. Maybe the old Soviet block or China.
Well, if you were to present a faithless society, I would be happy to consider it. But the former USSR and China are hardly faithless societies. Maybe the Dutch would be a better example of a faithless society.
I suppose, with religion being on the decline (due to the failure of faith) we can expect good things to come eh?
Yes, I think so. And these good things are already starting to be realized. The snowball is just beginning its tumble down the mountain :)
I knew there was a reason I love your blog so much! Glad to see that you began posting a little more often. Great responses to the Christian troll on your site!
Hi Aaron, been reading your blog for a bit, first time commenting, though.
Very provocative, very interesting. It's nice to have a place online that compiles this kind of material in one place. Goodness knows we all have our hands full with other blogs engorged with info on our other pursuits. Thanks for a forum to display and discuss.
Keeping with the points Jay set out and your responses, I just have a couple notes to tag in.
I'm curious about the immoral aspects of promoting an afterlife. It's not that I think one way or the other if there is none, but I'm wondering about the basis of saying something is immoral if the position we're starting from presupposes no overarcing foundation for morality apart from social contracts. In my thinking, those ultimately have to be arbitrary. Would you agree?
On the point of religion unimproving society (as surely it has its turns), it can also be plainly shown that it helps. I just read this article in the Times that illustrates that: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/matthew_parris/article5400568.ece
It seems obvious that the dogmatic existence of Western Christendom is on the decline. That obviously doesn't indicate the global status of the religion. Case in point, China now has more Christians than most nations in the world, despite government regulation and extremist elements of persecution. SouthEast Asian countries perpetrate more acts of hate against Christians than are publicized in mainstream media, but their faith is continuing to grow there, too. One might say that even though the West is seeing a decline in organized religion, personal declarations of faith are on the rise on a global scale. Thoughts?
Trev
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