U.S. Religious Landscape Survey -- May 26, 2009

[ZombieHorde]

Major Religious Traditions in the U.S.

An extensive new survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life details statistics on religion in America and explores the shifts taking place in the U.S. religious landscape. Based on interviews with more than 35,000 Americans age 18 and older, the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey finds that religious affiliation in the U.S. is both very diverse and extremely fluid.



More than one-quarter of American adults (28%) have left the faith in which they were raised in favor of another religion - or no religion at all. If change in affiliation from one type of Protestantism to another is included, 44% of adults have either switched religious affiliation, moved from being unaffiliated with any religion to being affiliated with a particular faith, or dropped any connection to a specific religious tradition altogether.

http://religions.pewforum.org/reports">Much more at this Satanic link.

[bananas]

1. 1.6% atheist.

:popcorn:

[ZombieHorde]

3. Over 10% godless. nt

[bananas]

4. No, less than 10% godless

0.7% Buddhist
1.6% Atheist
6.3% Secular Unaffiliated
---
8.6% Godless

[ZombieHorde]

5. +2.4 agnostic. Agnostics don't believe in god, therefore, they are godless.

[bananas]

6. They aren't sure, so they're not completely godless.

They might say a prayer just in case.
So, they aren't godless.

[ZombieHorde]

7. If you are not sure then you don't truly believe, if you don't truly believe, then you are godless.

[bananas]

9. That's not correct. nt

[dmallind]

11. delete. nt

[ZombieHorde]

13. where is my logical flaw? nt

[dmallind]

10. Are the religious unaffiliated necessarily godly? Interesting question.

Could they be just vague "something out there but go to church cos it's good for the kids" types?

[moggie]

8. 1.7% Jewish

I keep hearing that the USA is a "Judeo-Christian nation", but with a little more push from the International Atheist Conspiracy perhaps we can change that to Atheo-Christian. The report does say that young people are substantially more likely than older people to be unaffiliated, so if we keep up our evil recruitment of youngsters, there's hope for the future, provided we don't eat too many of them.

From the summary:

To illustrate this point, one need only look at the biggest gainer in this religious competition - the unaffiliated group. People moving into the unaffiliated category outnumber those moving out of the unaffiliated group by more than a three-to-one margin. At the same time, however, a substantial number of people (nearly 4% of the overall adult population) say that as children they were unaffiliated with any particular religion but have since come to identify with a religious group. This means that more than half of people who were unaffiliated with any particular religion as a child now say that they are associated with a religious group. In short, the Landscape Survey shows that the unaffiliated population has grown despite having one of the lowest retention rates of all "religious" groups.

[dmallind]

12. This is a serious point at its heart

Even when you take self-identified atheists with all the confusion and stigma the word generates, we are equal to Jews and more than Muslims in number.

Every question of religion or its influence on society is sure to include respectful and even pandering attention to those two minorities, but always ignores the nonbelievers.

Why? It's not some deep conspiracy or even assumptive theism. It's because atheists and nonbelievers don;t organize, get off their ass and make sure their numbers are heard when they are pissed on like Jews and Muslims do. Too many of us hide behind smug rationalizations about herding cats or not wanting to be an organized group because we're too cool and ruggedly individual.

[rgbecker]

2. Easy come, easy go.