LindaJoy:

The Family is immune to democratic processes.

How they run their organisation may be but their success in attaining their aims very much isn't.

Bestonnet- the fundamentlist voters in this country are not related to the elite fundamentalist group represented by The Family. The Family is immune to democratic processes. Plus, Barack Obama has prayed with this group and has been a featured speaker for them, according to his campaign. I again recommend that you read Sharlet's book. Also, the Cato Institute did an online interview with Jeff Sharlet. It's about an hour long- go to http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/11164 .

I have no statistics to back this, but I've long suspected that the majority of Americans are closet atheists/agnostics.

Wouldn't be all that surprising if that were the case, probably more likely in a country that's ahead of the US though.

Though getting statistics on that would be very hard to do.

Erich Vieth:

Over my lifetime, I've had at least three priests admit to me that they wondered whether there was a God. On Sundays, though, they are always back at that pulpit acting like they have no doubts--is that the power of the paycheck or what??

It's not like God provides their food (belief in God by other people might though).

Erich Vieth:

Perhaps Daniel Dennett ("Breaking the Spell") had this same experience with the many closet agnostic/atheists out there, resulting in his declaration that most religious people don't really believe in God. Rather, they believe in belief. They believe that they are supposed to believe in God.

I suspect that most people do believe in a god, just not the one that the religion they claim to follow worships (the god that most people worship would be close to deistic).

Even then a lot of people who consider themselves non-religious will be counted as Christians because they picked the Christian denomination of their parents or grandparents instead of the non-religious option.

Perhaps Daniel Dennett ("Breaking the Spell") had this same experience with the many closet agnostic/atheists out there, resulting in his declaration that most religious people don't really believe in God. Rather, they believe in belief. They believe that they are supposed to believe in God.

To be specific, the quote contains three statements:
( a) 1939-2005: 37-49 percent report "attended church/synagogue in the week before"
( b) 1992-2005: 28-36 percent report "attended once per week"
( c) 1992-2005: 9-14 percent report "attended almost every week"

(b) appears to be stronger than ( c), since not attending in a week would rule you out of (b) but place you in ( c).

Along with the fact that a lot of people who say yes are lying there is also the possibility that once per week was interpreted to mean "Once per week every so often" by most respondents which would actually be quite a bit weaker than almost every week.

LindaJoy: The decline in Christianity may be hard to see on the individual level, but on the demographic level, there's no doubt. The number of atheists is growing in every generation, and the number of believers is steadily declining. Protestants will soon be less than 50% of the country's population for the first time ever, if they aren't already. Even the vaunted Christian megachurches represent consolidation more than growth.

To be specific, the quote contains three statements:
( a) 1939-2005: 37-49 percent report "attended church/synagogue in the week before"
( b) 1992-2005: 28-36 percent report "attended once per week"
( c) 1992-2005: 9-14 percent report "attended almost every week"

(b) appears to be stronger than ( c), since not attending in a week would rule you out of (b) but place you in ( c).

Meanwhile, your discussion has:
"the percentage ... who reported church attendance every week - 9 to 14 percent"

This category appears to correspond to (b).

Interested readers may be further interested in this article. It's light on citations, and I strongly suspect that the authors are deliberately overlooking weaknesses in the global data; but the conclusions do fit with my own feelings on the correlation between material security and religiosity.

Getting good statistics about religion is very difficult so that's to be expected.

LindaJoy:

Elite fundamentalism has had much more behind the scenes power in the US government than anyone has realized for about the last 70 years.

The reason they have power right now is because the fundamentalists can give votes to candidates that support their agenda.

Atheists in the US are probably a larger group than the fundamentalists and almost as good at voting which means that the power wielded by atheists is actually about equal to what the fundies have.

The only difference is that the fundies have actually been using their power.

There is also the fact that the fundies are growing slower than the non-religious. Once Obama's 2 terms are up it should be time for politicians to pander to atheists.

MisterDomino:

I think that the generational aspect is crucial in this case,

It is, but for a different reason, namely that most people decide what whether they'll be religious or not in their teenage years and stick to it for the rest of their life.

MisterDomino:

Now that the Cold War is over, the religious extremists are looking for a new boogeyman through which they can channel their power.

They're trying to use Islam but along with overestimating the threat it poses (not that it doesn't pose a threat but just like with communism they overestimate how much of one it poses) and they are trying to claim that Christianity is somehow the answer to it despite Christianity not being different enough to have an advantage over Islam.

Going back to what I mentioned earlier, I think that many of the voters and figureheads in politics are stuck in that World War II / Cold War era in which atheism was somehow equated with radical political movements. The "new" atheism emerging in the United States is life-affirming and politically sound; this is what scares the religious right, and they are reacting harshly in an attempt to salvage their stranglehold on any future generations. Without such momentum, they lose generations of potential proselytizers.

It's more likely to be that atheists are starting to assert the political that they have in opposition to the ultra-religious and the greater number of non-religious means that the fundies actually have less power than their biggest enemies.

Polly:

This does not sound like happy news.

It's a coincidence, for atheism to go from almost non-existent to dominant it gradually increase in numbers and at some point along that increase it will approximately equal the number of fundies.

Polly:

It kinda supports what I sometimes fear: That atheism is an extreme position in a spectrum of religiosity, with fundamentalists being at the other end. Sort of a 0-10 scale of faith. Extremes are almost always forever marginalized. Although, I'd like to see a lot more marginalization of Fundies.

Given that other countries have higher proportions of atheists I wouldn't worry about that.

Even in the US the youth are far more atheistic than they are fundamentalist.

in America or any other society, the number of people who are fiercely religious tends to be about equal to the number who are not religious at all

This does not sound like happy news. It kinda supports what I sometimes fear: That atheism is an extreme position in a spectrum of religiosity, with fundamentalists being at the other end. Sort of a 0-10 scale of faith. Extremes are almost always forever marginalized. Although, I'd like to see a lot more marginalization of Fundies.

By "extreme" I, of course, don't mean that atheism is out of bounds as a rational conclusion given the dearth of evidence for the existence of god. I mean that it's further than most people seem willing to go. It could be that affluent societies can reach a static equilibrium in which the population is just moderate enough not to be oppressive, but "spiritual" enough to relegate atheists to the fringe and, maybe, dopey enough to accept the teaching of pseudoscience in classrooms.

But, seeing as the US is one of the most religious 1st world countries, I am still optimistic that our ranks are due for a swelling.

Given that American religiosity has been declining with each new generation, it's not out of the question that we will come to a tipping point where the majority will be atheists, not believers.

I think that the generational aspect is crucial in this case, Ebon. Remember that just fifty years ago, atheism was tied to the fear-mongering surrounding communism. To many Americans of the McCarthy era, atheists were communists, and vice versa. Now that the Cold War is over, the religious extremists are looking for a new boogeyman through which they can channel their power. This could explain why the teaching of evolution in schools is receiving so much flak from the fundies; by using the term "Darwinism," religious propagandists can equate evolution with social darwinism, which they tenuously link to genocide and -- you guessed it, communism (or insert political extremist movement of your choice).

People are beginning to distance themselves from such ideas, and as each new generation grows further and further from the Cold War, so too will they stray from religious extremism based upon rabble rousing.

@ LindaJoy:

I would love to be as optimistic as you, but I live in the south so it's hard to see that decline you are talking about.

Granted that the South isn't the whole country, though.

Going back to what I mentioned earlier, I think that many of the voters and figureheads in politics are stuck in that World War II / Cold War era in which atheism was somehow equated with radical political movements. The "new" atheism emerging in the United States is life-affirming and politically sound; this is what scares the religious right, and they are reacting harshly in an attempt to salvage their stranglehold on any future generations. Without such momentum, they lose generations of potential proselytizers.

It won't happen overnight, and probably not even in my lifetime, but there will come a day when religious fundamentalists are regarded as mentally unstable by the majority. There will come a time when talking to imaginary beings (i.e. prayer) is regarded for what it is: delusional behavior. And I am confident that some day, a long way down the road, one's religious affiliation will be as unimportant as what kind of toothpaste he uses.

Time is against them. They just don't realize that they're fighting a losing battle.