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Originally Posted by ecriture d'adulte
The 1-15 analogy makes no sense. It's more like a fan saying we won after their team wins despite doing nothing, especially since I said explicitly that I'm not arguing atheism or new atheist are a causal factor.
I'll point out that while moving the New Atheists from participants to spectators serves your argument, your analysis fails the reality test. They were not fans yelling at the TV for a running play, seeing that the team picked a passing play, and then celebrating a touchdown anyway. The New Atheists *DID* play in the game. They did have *AN* impact on the outcome. I will say that they even *CONTRIBUTED* to the the "win" in some sense.
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For the first time in US history a majority do not belong to a religious congregation and no religion is at an all time high in the US while Catholicism and Protestantism are both decreasing as a percentage of the population. No religion will certainly increase again this decade while the big religions fall again. These aren't cheap gains either, that simply come from people without religion having more kids or immigration from places where no religion is the default. People leaving actual religions and converting to none is fueling the growth. It's a major societal change..... I can't think of an actual religion in US history that has ever been as large while growing as fast through conversion as no religion is now.
Yes, the rise of the nones has been happening for over a decade. But no. The bolded is wrong. The rise of the nones is not people leaving religion and converting to none. The shift is primarily seen by the increasing number of people in younger generations entering into the survey landscape. That is not people "leaving actual religions and converting." It's merely "new people with a different 'default' response to religiosity being surveyed."
Granted, this is a true societal shift, but it's not the mass exodus you seem to be implying. Rather, the culture-at-large has reached a point where people no longer take on an assumed default identity. Part of this is that there really is not longer a cultural assumed identity. The population is simply too diverse (and aware of its diversity) to do that.
The reality is that people tend towards religiosity as they get older. Scroll down to the graph titled "Nones Decrease with Age":
https://news.gallup.com/opinion/poll...ise-nones.aspx
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Several things are evident. There are clearly more "nones" of all ages now than there were in 2002 and 2009, and particularly more nones now among younger people. This is the rise of the nones we hear so much about, and it's a rise of the nones that is most evident among those who are younger.
But, despite this overall increase of nones, older people are still less likely to eschew religion than those who are younger. And, the pattern of nones among those of millennial age today follows the same generational pattern evident in 2002 and 2009. People in their 20s are less religious than people in their early 30s.
It goes on to analyze that church attendance increases with age as well. It is certainly lower than previous years, and the drop is meaningful. But it defies your analysis.
There is an underlying shift in the demographics. There is increasing acceptability of "atheist" labels an an overall decrease in religiosity. But "hard gains" of conversion do not appear to be the causal factor.