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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 19, 2024

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To be clear, I don’t think that every single person will inevitably believe that god doesn’t exist. I do think, however, that there is sufficient atheism, and scientific thinking and knowledge in our society that significantly many people cannot be convinced to believe or to feign belief.

The stats indicate that the future of the United States has less organized religion, but most people are still likely to believe in the supernatural. Atheists are still only 3% of the population, and in the ever growing category of "Nones" 66% currently claim to believe in a god, 37% believe in Heaven, and 27% believe in Hell. Heck, 23% of the people who explictitly identified as atheists believed in "some kind of higher power." Under Pew's current projections if the historical trends continue then in 2070 Christians will still outnumber Nones 46% to 41%. I see no reason to believe that a majority of those nones will be atheists.

All this to say that while organized religion in the United States is on the decline, atheism will still be a strongly minority position.