"I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone It, people like me!" - Stuart Smalley
"Christians... We're smart enough. Beautiful enough, and doggone it, God loves us! Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the smartest and most beautiful of all? God and Bible-believing, Christians - hands down!" - Anonymous
"I hope America has a revival. We need to be smarter and thinner!" - Anonymous
As can be seen above, on May 23, 2020, an administrator of RationalWiki who goes by the moniker Ace McWicked, admitted that its editors are a "bunch of pearl clutching pansies".
Last year David Beckworth, an assistant professor of Economics at Texas State University, examined historic patterns in the size of evangelical congregations and found that, during each recession cycle between 1968 and 2004, membership of evangelical churches jumped by 50%.
A recent spot check of some large Roman Catholic parishes and mainline Protestant churches around the nation indicated attendance increases there, too. But they were nowhere near as striking as those reported by congregations describing themselves as evangelical, a term generally applied to churches that stress the literal authority of Scripture and the importance of personal conversion, or being born again.Part of the evangelicals new excitement is rooted in a communal belief that the big Christian revivals of the 19th century, known as the second and third Great Awakenings, were touched off by economic panics. Historians of religion do not buy it, but the notion has always lived in the lore of evangelism, said Tony Carnes, a sociologist who studies religion.A study last year may lend some credence to the legend. In Praying for Recession: The Business Cycle and Protestant Religiosity in the United States, David Beckworth, an assistant professor of economics at Texas State University, looked at long-established trend lines showing the growth of evangelical congregations and the decline of mainline churches and found a more telling detail: During each recession cycle between 1968 and 2004, the rate of growth in evangelical churches jumped by 50 percent. By comparison, mainline Protestant churches continued their decline during recessions, though a bit more slowly.The little-noticed study began receiving attention from some preachers in September, when the stock market began its free fall. With the swelling attendance they were seeing, and a sense that worldwide calamities come along only once in an evangelists lifetime, the study has encouraged some to think big.
“When people are shaken to the core, it can open doors.” - Rev. A. R. Bernard, founder and senior pastor of the Christian Cultural Center in Brooklyn, New York’s largest evangelical congregation as quoted in the New York Times article Bad Times Draw Bigger Crowds to Churches
Excerpt from the academic paper entitled The Changing Face of Global Christianity by Dr. Todd Johnson & Sandra S. Kim:
As Latourette’s Great Century was coming to a close, churches outside ofEurope and the Americas that took root in the 19th century grew rapidly inthe 20th century.10 Africa, in particular, led this transformation growing fromonly 10 million Christians in 1900 to 360 million by AD 2000. Given currenttrends, there could be over 600 million Christians in Africa by2025. Shortlyafter 1980, Christians in the South outnumbered those in the North for thefirst time in 1,000 years. In 1900 over 80% of all Christians lived in Europeand Northern America, however, by 2005 this proportion had fallen to under 40% and will likely fall below 30% before 2050. Projections for thefuture show that the Christian churches of the Global South (Africa, Asia,Latin America and Oceania) will likely continue to acquire an increasingpercentage of global Christianity...
Another daily reality for Southern Christians is poverty. Much of the global South deals with serious issues of poverty and a lack of access to proper health care. Countries that have been hardest hit by AIDS, such as Botswana, Zimbabwe, and Swaziland, are also countries where Christianity is flourishing. Without access to the necessary medical care, accounts of healing and exorcism found in the Bible are taken more seriously. The work of the Holy Spirit exhibited in the ministry of signs and miracles of healing and deliverance from demonic powers has exploded in the ministry of Pentecostal/Charismatic churches in the global South. David Smith describes these churches as “overwhelmingly charismatic and conservative in character, reading the New Testament in ways that seem puzzlingly literal to their friends in the North,” and as “largely made up of poor people who in many cases live on the very edge of existence.” Thus the growth of Christianity in poorer regions implies not only an alternative reading of the Bible, but a different experience of the Bible.
The atheist author and advocate David Madison, PhD wrote in March of 2019:
I remain haunted—and terrified—by what I read on a Christian website, not long after the turn of this century: that by 2025, there will be one billion (yes, that’s with a “b”) Pentecostals in the world. That should scare us as much as global warming.
The American sociologist and author Peter L. Berger introduced the concept of desecularization in 1999.According to Berger, "One can say with some confidence that modern Pentecostalism must be the fastest growing religion in human history."
Professor Phillip Jenkins published the book The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity.
Chuck Colson, citing the work of Jenkins, writes:
As Penn State professor Philip Jenkins writes in The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity, predictions like Huntingtons betray an ignorance of the explosive growth of Christianity outside of the West.
For instance, in 1900, there were approximately 10 million Christians in Africa. By 2000, there were 360 million. By 2025, conservative estimates see that number rising to 633 million. Those same estimates put the number of Christians in Latin America in 2025 at 640 million and in Asia at 460 million.
According to Jenkins, the percentage of the worlds population that is, at least by name, Christian will be roughly the same in 2050 as it was in 1900. By the middle of this century, there will be three billion Christians in the world -- one and a half times the number of Muslims. In fact, by 2050 there will be nearly as many Pentecostal Christians in the world as there are Muslims today.
Professor Eric Kaufmann, who teaches at Birkbeck College, University of London, specializes in the academic area of how demographic changes affect religion/irreligion and politics. Kaufmann is an agnostic. Kaufmannsaid of religious demographic projections concerning the 21st century and the future growth of religious fundamentalism:
Part of the reason I think demography is very important, at least if we are going to speak about the future, is that it is the most predictable of the social sciences.
...if you look at a population and its age structure now. You can tell a lot about the future. ...So by looking at the relative age structure of different populations you can already say a lot about the future...
...Religious fundamentalism is going to be on the increase in the future and not just out there in the developing world..., but in the developed world as well.
The prominent historian Sir Diarmaid MacCulloch, professor of the History of the Church at Oxford University, indicates that he believes Christianity faces a "bright future" worldwide. According to MacCulloch, "Christianity, the world's largest religion, is rapidly expanding – by all indications, its future is very bright."
Atheism is in decline worldwide, with the number of atheists falling from 4.5% of the world’s population in 1970 to 2.0% in 2010 and projected to drop to 1.8% by 2020, according to a new report by the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (GCTS) in South Hamilton, Mass."
I argue that 97% of the world's population growth is taking place in the developing world, where 95% of people are religious.
On the other hand, the secular West and East Asia has very low fertility and a rapidly aging population... In the coming decades, the developed world's demand for workers to pay its pensions and work in its service sector will soar alongside the booming supply of young people in the third world. Ergo, we can expect significant immigration to the secular West which will import religious revival on the back of ethnic change. In addition, those with religious beliefs tend to have higher birth rates than the secular population, with fundamentalists having far larger families. The epicentre of these trends will be in immigration gateway cities like New York (a third white), Amsterdam (half Dutch), Los Angeles (28% white), and London, 45% white British.
The website Science 2.0 declared on July 14, 2015:
Atheism as a belief system has peaked and its share of humanity is shrinking, demographic studies indicate. Win/Gallup’s 2012 global poll on religion and atheism put atheists at 13%, while its 2015 poll saw that category fall to 11%. Other figures suggest the changes have deep, broad roots.
First, a community’s possession of atheistic world-views—for whatever reason—correlates with low or negative birth rates. The most significant examples are East Asian and European countries, which are at “below replacement” rates of birth, shrinking at speed.
Second, “forced” atheism has been disappearing steadily over the past 40 years and we see a corresponding surge of people towards spiritual clusters. In percentage terms, 1970 may be considered the high point for global atheism and agnosticism. As communism weakened, and eventually collapsed in 1989, there was a significant resurgence of religious belief (see chart below). The same thing is now happening in China.
Third, the surge of popularity for a novel type of “evangelical atheism” which began about a decade ago appears to be losing some of its steam. The movement’s celebrity leaders have fallen out of the bestseller lists, and are often now criticized by their former cheerleaders in newspaper columns. After a high-publicity start in 2013, Sunday Assemblies have plummeted out of the limelight and growth has been glacial.
And the near future? The latest global data also shows that young people, classified as those under 34, tend to be measurably more religious (66%) than older ones (60%). “With the trend of an increasingly religious youth globally, we can assume that the number of people who consider themselves religious will only continue to increase,” said Jean-Marc Leger, President of WIN/Gallup International Association.
..the view that atheism will sweep the globe to produce a non-believing utopia is extremely unlikely. The shrinking of the skeptical share of humanity is inevitable, as Welsh geneticist Steve Jones has stated.
..the data suggests that the global proportion of atheists will fall, while the number of pro-spiritual, pro-science middle group will grow.
Pew Research states: "By 2055 to 2060, just 9% of all babies will be born to religiously unaffiliated women, while more than seven-in-ten will be born to either Muslims (36%) or Christians (35%)." In 2012, the W. Edwards Deming Institute published a report by the World Future Society which indicated:
In 2100, however, the world will likely be only 9% unaffiliated — more religious than in 2012. The peak of the unaffiliated was in 1970 at around 20%, largely due to the influence of European communism. Since communism’s collapse, religion has been experiencing resurgence that will likely continue beyond 2100. All the world’s religions are poised to have enormous numeric growth (with the exceptions of tribal religions and Chinese folk religion), as well as geographic spread with the continuation of migration trends. Adherents of the world’s religions—perhaps particularly Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists—will continue to settle in the formerly Christian and ever-expanding cities of Europe and North America, causing increases of religious pluralism in these areas. Christians and Muslims together will encompass two-thirds of the global population—more than 7 billion individuals. In 2100, the majority of the world’s 11.6 billion residents will be adherents of religious traditions.
Why the religious will inherit the earth (Part 1) by Eric Kaufmann
Why the religious will inherit the earth (Part 2) by Eric Kaufmann
As can be seen by the screen capture of his Twitter account, David Silverman, ex-president of the American Atheists, after leaving two atheist organizations amid sexual harassment allegations, calls himself a former atheist activist.
In terms of its editor base and content, the website RationalWiki skews left of center politically and the majority of editor base are atheists/agnostics.
For the last decade, atheists, humanists and others secularists have worked hard to organize a “secular vote” that would counter the political clout of the religious right.
President-elect Donald J. Trump’s victory dealt that movement a body blow when he garnered 81 percent of the white evangelical vote and 60 percent of the white Catholic vote. Mormons, too, voted overwhelmingly for Trump.
Despite Trump’s not being a particularly religious person, his platform was seen as anti-secular in many atheist and humanist circles. He said he would appoint religiously conservative Supreme Court justices, ban Muslim immigrants, favor Christianity and repeal the Johnson Amendment, which prohibits certain tax-exempt organizations from endorsing political candidates — issues antithetical to organized atheism and humanism.
The U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was appointed by Trump, is a judge who has ruled in favor of religious liberty in his past decisions.U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, who was also nominated to the court by Trump, gave a favorable ruling in the Hobby Lobby case in respect to religious liberty. At the 2018 American Atheists National Convention, the ex-president of the American Atheists organization David Silverman declared about atheist movement post President Donald Trump's election:
It is a hard time to be an atheist activist. This has affected us. And it has affected our community...
...it has really affected us. We are suffering a level of defeatism that I have never seen before...
We feel the loss. And we feel like we have lost. We feel like we lost the election]]... We see this cascade of attack coming down at us over and over from all different directions and we feel like it's over. I have heard so many times it makes me sick. It makes me sad. It feels like we lost.
The apathy that follows. It doesn't matter. We can't win anyways. It's useless to fight. This apathy is infecting us. It's hurting us.
And people are reacting to each other now. And so that is causing a division. Lots and lots of division in our movement. Hard, bad division... And that has resulted in a splintering and factioning of the movement that I have never seen before and none of us have.
In other words, we're in a bad situation and it's getting worse.
In January of 2017, the atheist and secular leftist PZ Myerssaid about Donald Trump's presidential victory:
This span of time representing the agonizing death of American idealism, decline of liberalism, and collapse into corruption has played out as the background of my life.
That’s depressing. History is not going to remember me, but I managed to live through a terrible period that will be remembered, unpleasantly. It would be nice to go out on a note of optimism, but that’s probably not going to happen.
The website Marketwatch reported concerning the aftermath of the 2016 presidential race: Trump’s win is causing a surge in demand for mental health services.
In 2019, John Feffer wrote at the left leaning The Nation:
In the Americas, the Trump tsunami has swept across both continents and the 'pink tide' of progressivism has all but disappeared from the southern half of the hemisphere...
In this planet-wide rising tide of right-wing populism, the liberal left commands only a few disconnected islands — Iceland, Mexico, New Zealand, South Korea, Spain, Uruguay... Worse, crafty operators with even more ambitious agendas stand ready to destroy the liberal status quo once and for all.
So how much did Donald Trump's 2016 victory affect RationalWiki and its editor base?
In May of 2020, former RationalWiki Foundation board member and admin GrammarCommie reported that: he was cutting himself; he had thoughts of wanting to die and that he had feelings of low self worth. During this time, RationalWiki editor LeafyGreen Mario indicated that GrammarComie's mental health crisis was affecting the mental health of the rest of RationalWikians.
On May 17, 2020, the RationalWiki administrator who goes by the moniker DuceMoosolini, stated that RationalWiki "attracts all sorts of weird people".
On May 24, 2020, the RationalWiki administrator Oxyaena wrote: "it's just that i am probably raging too much most of the time to form coherent sentences."
On May 24, 2020, the RationalWiki editor who goes by the moniker Amassivegay indicated: "I am never sure I am even coherent most of the time."
Please look at the Google Trends graph below for Google searches for the term RationalWiki in the United States.
April 14, 2014 was the peak month of people Googling the term RationalWiki according to Google Trends. Post Trump inauguration things were more subdued in terms of people Googling the term RationalWiki so there were no spikes near the value of 100. By the time Trump left office, Google searches for the term RationalWiki was far less than the day Donald Trump was inaugurated.
The Freedom From Atheism Foundation was founded in response the Freedom From Religion Foundation and other like-minded militant atheistic organizations.
Dan Barker is a co-founder and co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation.
Writing on the sexism within the atheist community, atheist Victoria Bekiempis wrote in a Guardian article entitled Why the New Atheism is a boys' club:
Annie Laurie Gaylor, who founded the Freedom From Religion Foundation with her mother, Anne Nicol Gaylor, in 1978, sums it up succinctly: “One word — sexism.” Gaylor’s husband, Dan Barker, who helms the organization along with her, is usually the one invited to speaking engagements, despite her longer tenure as the organization’s leader and her numerous books on atheism.
However, as can be seen below, Google Trends shows a marked decrease in the searches at Google for the term "Dan Barker" in the period from 2004 to 2020.
In addition, Google Trends shows a marked decrease in the searches at Google for the term "Annie Laurie Gaylor" in the period from 2004 to 2020 as can be seen below:
The Religion News Service reported:
For the last decade, atheists, humanists and others secularists have worked hard to organize a “secular vote” that would counter the political clout of the religious right.
President-elect Donald J. Trump’s victory dealt that movement a body blow when he garnered 81 percent of the white evangelical vote and 60 percent of the white Catholic vote. Mormons, too, voted overwhelmingly for Trump.
Despite Trump’s not being a particularly religious person, his platform was seen as anti-secular in many atheist and humanist circles. He said he would appoint religiously conservative Supreme Court justices, ban Muslim immigrants, favor Christianity and repeal the Johnson Amendment, which prohibits certain tax-exempt organizations from endorsing political candidates — issues antithetical to organized atheism and humanism.
The U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was appointed by Trump, is a judge who has ruled in favor of religious liberty in his past decisions. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, who was also nominated to the court by Trump, gave a favorable ruling in the Hobby Lobby case in respect to religious liberty. And Donald Trump is the favorite in 2020 and he very well might replace Ruther Bader Ginsberg with a right-wing conservative very much in favor of religious liberty. Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor, expect the Google searches for your names to go further down while the Google searches for God and Jesus in the world continue to go up and up! And expect many of your future atheist lawsuits to hit Donald Trump's wall of religious liberty!
Next, according to Google Trends, worldwide searches at Google for the terms God and Jesus are up from the period of 2004 to 2020 as can be seen below:
On behalf of Freedom From Atheism Foundation, it supporters and all of Christendom, the Examining Atheism blog declares total and glorious victory over the Freedom From Religion Foundation, Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor!
The Christian internet evangelism organization Global Media Outreach indicates that as of September 2019 over 1.9 billion gospel visits have occurred on their websites.
On the other hand, no atheist organization has ever accomplished such a web marketing feat. In fact, internet atheism has been in a slump since 2011.
Consider these two questions:
1. Has the global market share of leading atheist websites plunged since at least 2011?
2. Is global atheism declining as a percentage of the world population and will it decline in an accelerated fashion in the 21st century?
Decline of internet atheism post 2011
Here are some web traffic graphs from leading atheists websites taken from the leading website web traffic companies of Alexa, Quantcast, Compete, SEMrush along with some data from Google Trends.
1. 2004 to 2020 Google searches for the terms atheist, atheism, agnostic and agnosticism according to Google trends
2. New atheist Richard Dawkins - Google Trends data 2004 to 2020
Richardawkins.net - Quantcast data 12-28-2011 to 12-21-2012
Richarddawkins.net web traffic according to Alexa.com:
Richarddawkins.net Compete.com internet traffic data for 4/2011 to 4/2012:
3. Atheist PZ Myers - Google trends data 2004 to 2020
4. Atheist Christopher Hitchens - Google Trends data 2004 to 2020
5. Atheist Dan Barker - Google Trends data 2004 t0 2020
6. Freethoughtblogs.com
The web traffic of Freethought Blogs saw a dramatic decline from June 2019 to September 2019 according to the web traffic tracking company Alexa.
On June 23, 2019, Freethought Blogs was the 90,953th most popular website in the world according to Alexa, but by September 23, 2019 Freethought Blogs was merely the 170,112th most popular website in the world according to Alexa.
Freethoughtblogs.com 2012 - web traffic according to Alexa.com:
7. Infidels.org
The atheistic website Secular Web declares about itself, "By providing information which is nearly impossible to find elsewhere, the Secular Web has sought to level the playing field by offering arguments and evidence challenging supernatural beliefs."
From January 2015 to December 2019, the Secular Web saw a steep loss of Google referral traffic according to the online visibility and marketing analytics company SEMrush (Google traffic is commonly called organic traffic by web marketing professionals).
According to Google, "To give you the most useful information, Search algorithms look at many factors, including the words of your query, relevance and usability of pages, expertise of sources... To help ensure Search algorithms meet high standards of relevance and quality, we have a rigorous process that involves both live tests and thousands of trained external Search Quality Raters from around the world."
It would seem that the Secular Web's "information" is hard to find period! If only atheists had proof and evidence that showed the validity of the atheist worldview, then a popular search engine that begins with a G would find them more relevant and also deem them to have more expertise! Miss G is quite demanding in her expectations, however - much to the chagrin of atheists worldwide!
The Secular Web website experienced a large drop in its global market share from November 29, 2019 to December 29, 2019 according to the web traffic tracking company Alexa. Specifically, the Secular Web website went from being the 315,007th most popular website in the world to being the 577,111th most popular website during this period according to Alexa.
Infidels.org Compete.com internet traffic data for 6/2/07 to 7/30/11
8. American Atheists at Atheists.org
Atheists.org Compete.com internet traffic data for 6/2/07 to 7/30/11:
Atheists.org Compete.com internet traffic data for 4/2011 to 4/2012:
9. Atheist James Randi - Google trends data 2004 to 2020
10. Skeptic Michael Shermer - Google trends data 2004 to 2020
11. The Orbit
In 2016, The Orbit website lost a considerable amount of its global market share according to the web traffic tracking company Alexa. On September 4, 2017 it was the 357,369th most popular website in the world according to Alexa. On January 14, 2020, Alexa ranked The Orbit the 924,521th most popular website in the world.
12. Other atheist websites which have seen a decline in web traffic
Internet atheism has been an abysmal failure!
In 2007, the Bible believer Chuck Norris noted that atheists were making a concerted effort to spread atheism via the internet. As you you can see above, it has been an abysmal failure! The atheist community flooded the internet with a lot of shallow, ill-reasoned fluff that many in the public quickly dismissed.
Atheists, you forgot one of the most important rules of Business 101: When you have a very bad product, increasing the advertising budget is not going to make it a long term success! And atheism is definitely an errant worldview - see the web resource: Atheism
Is atheism boring or are atheists bad digital marketers who have difficulty understanding search engine algorithms? Or is it both? Oh atheists, feel the sting!
The Decline of atheism - an established trend - other resources
Public domain, see: http://www.bestthinking.com/thinkers/business_and_finance/sales_and_marketing/consumer_behavior/ekant-veer?tab=blog&blogpostid=16381%2c16381
