Atheism is not growing in the United States. Señor Atheist, the future of atheism in America is bleak. Olé! Olé! Olé!

Pew Research survey data indicates that the percentage of atheists in the United States has remained at 4% from 2015 to July of 2019.

In June 2016, American Interest reported:

First of all, religious belief is still very powerful and widespread, and there is nothing inevitable about its decline. In fact, the proportion of people who say they believe in God actually ticked modestly upward, from 86 percent to 89 percent, since Gallup last asked the question in 2014.

The USA and Britain definitely have a culteral influence on each other.  The British new atheist Richard Dawkins and British born Christopher Hitchens were the among the "four horseman" of the New Atheism Movement.  And although New Atheism turned out to be a fad that petered out, it may have caused a modest uptick in the percentage of atheists/agnostics in the United States (In 2014, according to General Survey Service data 3% of Americans identified as atheists, and 5% identified as agnostics.  In 1991, 2% of Americans identified as atheist, and 4% identified as agnostic according to General Survey Service). The BBC points out that the Brexit vote was followed by the election of Donald Trump months later.  

On December 2018, The Times stated: "The number of atheists in Britain has fallen in the past year, according to a survey suggesting that more people are attending church, albeit irregularly."

The Guardian published an article in 2017 entitled Nearly 50% are of no religion – but has UK hit ‘peak secular’? which declared:

But, Bullivant told the Observer that the “growth of no religion may have stalled”. After consistent decline, in the past few years the proportion of nones appears to have stabilised. “Younger people tend to be more non-religious, so you’d expect it to keep going – but it hasn’t. The steady growth of non-Christian religions is a contributing factor, but I wonder if everyone who is going to give up their Anglican affiliation has done so by now? We’ve seen a vast shedding of nominal Christianity, and perhaps it’s now down to its hardcore.

 Concerning the future of religion/irreligion in Europe, professor Eric Kaufmann wrote in 2011:

We have performed these unprecedented analyses on several cases. Austria offers us a window into what the future holds. Its census question on religious affiliation permits us to perform cohort component projections, which show the secular population plateauing by 2050, or as early as 2021 if secularism fails to attract lapsed Christians and new Muslim immigrants at the same rate as it has in the past. (Goujon, Skirbekk et al. 2006). 

This task will arguably become far more difficult as the supply of nominal Christians dries up while more secularisation-resistant Muslims and committed rump Christians comprise an increasing share of the population.

Hispanics are growing quickly in the United States. According to Wikipedia, a wiki founded by an atheist and agnostic, "Based on the 2010 census, Hispanics are now the largest minority group in 191 out of 366 metropolitan areas in the US. The projected Hispanic population of the United States for July 1, 2050 is 132.8 million people, or 30.2% of the nation's total projected population on that date."

Christianity Today reported in 2019:

First-generation immigrants are leading the Latino evangelical expansion in the US—drawing in more unchurched believers and new converts than the average church plant, despite having smaller congregations, less funding, and tensions surrounding US immigration policy. 

The Latino population is growing, especially in the South, where 59 percent of the 218 new congregations surveyed are located (half are Southern Baptist). And the evangelical faith is growing with it.

The abtract for the 2006 journal article Spirituality Among Latinas/os Implications of Culture in Conceptualization and Measurement declares:

Latinos are now the largest minority group in the United States... 

Latino theological literature describes spirituality as integral with Latino culture. Although Latinos are not a monolithic or homogenous group, there are fundamental cultural influences that must be considered in an exploration of spirituality among Latinas/os.... 

Most of the empirical research in spirituality and religiosity among Latinos has targeted primarily Mexican Americans. These investigations indicate that spirituality and religiosity are interwoven with their daily lives and serve as foundations of strength in coping with life's struggles. For example, religious attendance was associated with psychological well-being across 3 generations of Mexican American families and with physical health status among Mexican American women. Latinos describe their faith as intimate and reciprocal relationships with God, family, and community, with these relationships playing an important role in health and well-being.

Time Magazine reported in May of 2013 about the growth of evangelical/pentecostal Christianity among American Latinos:

According to Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life while “more than two-thirds of the 52 million-plus Latinos in the U.S. are Catholic, that number could be cut in half by 2030.” NHCLC also establishes that 35 percent of Hispanics in America now call themselves “born-again.”

Fox News reported in May 2013 concerning Hispanic evangelicalism in the United States: 

Alfredo De Jesus is a fire-and-brimstone preacher who represents a global groundswell of Hispanics who've left the Catholic Church to become Protestant Evangelical Christians.

De Jesus pastors the New Life Church in Chicago, helping to expand it from 120 members in 2000 to over 17,000 today on multiple campuses.

"In the Evangelical church, we find freedom to worship, and with Hispanics, it's in us to be able to love people. Naturally, we just love people. We are hugging people," De Jesus said.

Latinos make up the largest ethnic minority in the United States — 52 million, according to latest Census stats. The majority — two-thirds — are still traditionally Roman Catholic. But there's been a palpable shift from one generation to the next, with the newer ones being "born again."

Evangelicals now number about 20 percent of the Latino population, according to the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference.

In their 2010 journal article entitled, Secularism, Fundamentalism or Catholicism? The Religious Composition of the United States to 2043 published in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vegard Skirbekk and Anne Goujon wrote: "The relatively low fertility of secular Americans and the religiosity of the immigrant inflow provide a countervailing force that will cause the secularization process within the total population to plateau before 2043." 

The world, the USA and the UK since the launch of the New Atheism movement back in 2004. The data shows the New Atheism movement failed

The term New Atheism, which first appeared in the November 2006 edition of Wired magazine, is frequently applied to a movement spawned by a series of six best-selling books by five authors that appeared in the period between 2004–2008. These authors include Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett and Victor J. Stenger.

Richard Dawkins said about New Atheism, "[O]ur struggle is not so much an intellectual struggle, as a political one: What are we going to do about it?”. Steven Poole wrote in The Guardian about New Atheism: "New Atheism’s arguments were never very sophisticated or historically informed."

The current state of the New Atheism movement

On November 6, 2015, the New Republic published an article entitled, Is the New Atheism dead?.  In 2013, Theo Hobson wrote an article published at The Spectator entitled Richard Dawkins has lost: meet the new new atheists. The atheist and evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson wrote, "The world appears to be tiring of the New Atheism movement..".  In March 2015, the atheist philosopher John Gray in an article at The Guardian titled What scares the new atheists reported:  "Today, it’s clear that no grand march is under way...The resurgence of religion is a worldwide development...For secular thinkers, the continuing vitality of religion calls into question the belief that history underpins their values."

In 2015, the atheist author Joshua Kelly wrote: 

...since the death of Hitchens: angry atheism lost its most charismatic champion. Call it what you like: New Atheism, fire-brand atheism, etc., had a surge with the Four Horsemen in the middle of the last decade and in the last four years has generally peetered out to a kind that is more docile, politically correct, and even apologetic.

YouTube's atheist Thunderfoot said about the atheist movement after Reason Rally 2016 had a very low turnout:

I'm not sure there is anything in this movement worth saving. Hitchens is dead. Dawkins simply doesn't have the energy for this sort of thing anymore. Harris went his own way. And Dennett just kind of blended into the background. So what do you think when the largest gathering of the nonreligious in history pulls in... I don't know. Maybe 2,000 people. Is there anything worth saving?

Professor James W. Jones wrote at a Oxford University Press website:

We seem to be witnessing a broad reaction against the New Atheism movement by atheists as well as religious believers, whether undermining the idea of a long-standing conflict between science and religion, or taking a critical view of their political agenda. James Ryerson recently examined three new books (including my own) in the New York Times Book Review – a small sample of a growing body of work... 

The New Atheism movement is receiving a powerful attack from another side as well — the politics implicit in their worldview. Two books published this year exemplify this critique, in which militant atheism is seen as an anti-progressive “secular fundamentalism.” C.J. Werleman, in The New Atheist Threat: The Dangerous Rise of Secular Extremists, himself formerly a militant atheist, describes the New Atheists’ uncritical devotion to science, their childish understanding of religion, their extreme Islamophobia, and intolerance of cultural diversity.

The World post New Atheism

On July 24, 2013, CNS News reported:

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 in South Hamilton, Mass.

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.

On December 23, 2012, Kaufmann wrote:

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.

Tables on the decline/growth of atheism/Christianity/other religions, by year

Data compiled by the Center for the Study of Global Christianity (CSGC) at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (GCTS):

• Status of Global Atheism/Christianity/other religions, 2019, in the Context of 1900–2050

• Status of Global Atheism/Christianity/other religions, 2018, in the Context of 1900–2050

• Status of Global Atheism/Christianity/other religions, 2017, in the Context of 1900–2050

• Status of Global Atheism/Christianity/other religions, 2016, in the Context of 1900–2050

• Status of Global Atheism/Christianity/other religions, 2015, in the Context of 1900–2050

The data in the tables above indicate the number of atheists in the world will drop in the 21st century. Recently, the number of atheists in the world started dropping.

The United States post New Atheism

According to the 2014 General Social Survey (GSS), the number of atheists and agnostics in the United States has remained relatively stable in the past 23 years. In 1991, 2% of Americans identified as atheist, and 4% identified as agnostic. In 2014, 3% of Americans identified as atheists, and 5% identified as agnostics.

In June 2016, American Interest reported:

First of all, religious belief is still very powerful and widespread, and there is nothing inevitable about its decline. In fact, the proportion of people who say they believe in God actually ticked modestly upward, from 86 percent to 89 percent, since Gallup last asked the question in 2014.

The Pew Research Center reported in 2013:

First of all, religious belief is still very powerful and widespread, and there is nothing inevitable about its decline. In fact, the proportion of people who say they believe in God actually ticked modestly upward, from 86 percent to 89 percent, since Gallup last asked the question in 2014. 

The number of people who identify themselves as atheists in the United States has been rising, modestly but steadily, in recent years. Our aggregated data from 2012 show that 2.4% of American adults say they are atheists when asked about their religious identity, up from 1.6% in 2007.

For data/information about the future of American atheism, please see: The future of American atheism is bleak

The United Kingdom post Atheism

The Guardian published an article in 2017 entitled Nearly 50% are of no religion – but has UK hit ‘peak secular’? which declared: 

But, Bullivant told the Observer that the “growth of no religion may have stalled”. After consistent decline, in the past few years the proportion of nones appears to have stabilised. “Younger people tend to be more non-religious, so you’d expect it to keep going – but it hasn’t. The steady growth of non-Christian religions is a contributing factor, but I wonder if everyone who is going to give up their Anglican affiliation has done so by now? We’ve seen a vast shedding of nominal Christianity, and perhaps it’s now down to its hardcore.

(In the United States, the vast majority of individuals who are "Nones"/"no religion" (people who are not part of organized religion) believe in the existence of God. Fewer than 15% of the "nones" consider themselves atheists.)

Conatus News reported in 2017:

Church of England worshippers increase 0.8 per cent since 2009. The number of non-religious people falls from 50.65% to 48.6% 

Rise in Church of England worshippers likely due to resurgence in patriotism and pride in Christianity, a report has found. 

According to a new report, for every person brought up in a non-religious household who becomes a churchgoer, 26 people raised as Christians now identify as non-believers.
The study, which is based on an analysis of the British Social Attitudes Survey and the European Social Survey, reported that the proportion of non-religious in the UK hit a high of 50.6 per cent in 2009. However, it has been decreasing ever since and hit 48.6 per cent in 2015. 

However, the proportion of those who identify as Church of England worshippers has seen a slight increased from 16.3 per cent in 2009 to 17.1 per cent in 2015.

Google trends data

Google trends measures the number of Google searches for various terms on a relative basis. As can be seen below,  the searches for the term "atheist" in the United States is now at its same level as it was as in January of 2004 (the level is at 32 as can be seen below). As far as the world, there are now less searches for the word "atheist" as there was in January 2005 (The level is at 37 now and it was at 45 in January of 2004 as can be seen below). Please wait a few seconds for the Google trends data to load.

American atheism suffers major beatings for 7 years

In June 2016, American Interest reported:

First of all, religious belief is still very powerful and widespread, and there is nothing inevitable about its decline. In fact, the proportion of people who say they believe in God actually ticked modestly upward, from 86 percent to 89 percent, since Gallup last asked the question in 2014.

Post Elevatorgate (a July 2011 controversy in which atheist Richard Dawkins was accused of misogny), there has been a lot of friction with the atheist movement (see: Atheist factions).

At the American Atheists 2018 convention, David Silverman, ex-president of the American Atheists organization, gave a speech entitled, "How the mighty get back up". The speech alluded to the pro-religious rights agenda of the Trump administration (See: Donald Trump and American atheists). During the speech Silverman said regarding American atheists, "We are suffering a level of defeatism that I have never seen before". (See: Decline of the atheist movement). Later in 2018, Silverman was fired due to allegations of financial conflicts and sexual assault (see also: Atheism and sexism)

At the 2018 American Atheists convention, the ex-president of the American Atheist organization David Silverman declared:

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.

RationalWiki is a wiki run by atheists/agnostics who are politically left leaning. It is predominantly run by "social justice warriors" (SJWs).

A RationalWiki editor who goes by the username ikanreed wrote on October 31, 2018 in relation to the declining editing of their wiki and the decline of the atheist/skeptic movement:

I think it's the massive reputation blow skepticism and rationalism itself has taken over the coarse of the last... I don't know, let's say 4 years...  The intellectual clout of rationalism has suffered dramatically, look at the way people talk about skeptics today versus 5 years ago.

Numerous atheists have declared that the "atheist movement is dead" or that it is dying (see: Decline of the atheist movement)

Facebook post at the Freedom For Atheism Foundation page about this article: 

Secularization will plateau in the United States sooner than some scholars expected

In 2015, BloombergView reported concerning the United States:

According to a much-discussed 2012 report from the Pew Research Center on Religion and Public Life, only 3 percent of U.S. atheists and agnostics are black, 6 percent are Hispanic, and 4 percent are Asian. Some 82 percent are white. (The relevant figures for the population at large at the time of the survey were 66 percent white, 11 percent black, 15 percent Hispanic, 5 percent Asian.)
...Craig Keener, in his huge review of claims of miracles in a wide variety of cultures, concludes that routine rejection of the possibility of the supernatural represents an impulse that is deeply Eurocentric.

In the United States, blacks have the highest rate of religiosity. Among Hispanics, religion has traditionally played a significant role in daily activity.

In June 2016, American Interest reported:

First of all, religious belief is still very powerful and widespread, and there is nothing inevitable about its decline. In fact, the proportion of people who say they believe in God actually ticked modestly upward, from 86 percent to 89 percent, since Gallup last asked the question in 2014.

In their 2010 journal article entitled, Secularism, Fundamentalism or Catholicism? The Religious Composition of the United States to 2043 published in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vegard Skirbekk and Anne Goujon wrote: "The relatively low fertility of secular Americans and the religiosity of the immigrant inflow provide a countervailing force that will cause the secularization process within the total population to plateau before 2043."

As can be seen by the videos below, recent U.S. census data shows that more whites are dying than being born in the United States and that whites will become a minority in the USA sooner than was expected. Of course, this is not good news for American atheist activists.

Why 2017 will be a terrible year for American atheists

Why is 2017 going to be a terrible year for American atheists?

In June of 2016, American Interest indicated:

First of all, religious belief is still very powerful and widespread, and there is nothing inevitable about its decline. In fact, the proportion of people who say they believe in God actually ticked modestly upward, from 86 percent to 89 percent, since Gallup last asked the question in 2014.

The United States is often said to have a "special relationship" with Britain and until the big decline of the New Atheist movement Richard Dawkins was often covered by the American press.  But now that movement is largely dead.

What is happening in Britain?

The Guardian published an article in 2017 entitled Nearly 50% are of no religion – but has UK hit ‘peak secular’? which declared:

 But, Bullivant told the Observer that the “growth of no religion may have stalled”. After consistent decline, in the past few years the proportion of nones appears to have stabilised. “Younger people tend to be more non-religious, so you’d expect it to keep going – but it hasn’t. The steady growth of non-Christian religions is a contributing factor, but I wonder if everyone who is going to give up their Anglican affiliation has done so by now? We’ve seen a vast shedding of nominal Christianity, and perhaps it’s now down to its hardcore.

The later Gordon Stein was an American atheist activist in the latter part of the 20th century. According the British newspaper The Independent Stein's main activity was the "acquisition and production of books on free-thought and the paranormal."

Gordon Stein wrote:

Atheism has long ceased to be a rare and oft-ignored philosophical outlook...It has transformed itself into an active political programme with clear objectives which, though they vary from state to state, unequivocally include the elimination of state religion, religious education, and the enshrinement of scientism.

Historically, atheists have screwed towards the left side of the political aisle.  The University of Cambridge's website Investigating Atheism said that the "most notable spread of atheism was achieved through the success of the 1917 Russian Revolution, which brought the Marxist-Leninists to power."

According to the Pew Forum, in the United States: "About two-thirds of atheists (69%) identify as Democrats (or lean in that direction), and a majority (56%) call themselves political liberals (compared with just one-in-ten who say they are conservatives).

Was the morale of secular leftists rattled after Donald Trump's election? Judging from all the tears and exclamations of being very depressed after Trump's election I would have to say yes to this question. 

Also, consider these articles which collectively indicate: the secular left is very emotional; secular leftists are more prone to mental illness and the secular left has not reacted very well to Donald Trump's election and presidency:

Secular leftists and mental illness

The id atheists

More Evidence that Postmodern Thinking is Id-Based

And not only is the moral of American atheists low, but no doubt many of them will shift their activities from atheist activism to leftist politics.

Betty Devios, who is the Secretary of Eeducation, is pushing for school choice via vouchers prograns which very well may provide federal government funding of private religious schools in order to expand school choice options in America (see: Trump's first education budget: Deep public school cuts in pursuit of school choice ).  A budget of 1 billion dollars is planned for school voucher programs according to US News & World Report. Many public schools are failing in the United States and this has been happening for a long time despite the fact that America spends more for education per capita on average compared to the rest of the world ( See also: U.S. education spending tops global list, study shows ).

The columnist Dennis Prager stated that "From elementary school through graduate school, only one way of looking at the world – the secular – is presented. The typical individual in the Western world receives as secular an indoctrination as the typical European received a religious one in the Middle Ages."

Atheists activists loathe Betty Devos who is an evangelical Christian. 

Below is the the Google trend data for the search "atheist" for Google USA and as you can see the graph has been going in a straight downward trajectory that last 5 years and the last 10 years or so:

Google searches for the term "atheist" for the last 5 years at Google USA: 

Google searches for the term "atheist" since 2014 at Google USA: 

Finale Note

So how have leftists been behaving lately? 

On May 31, PJ Media published the article Leftists want their enemies dead

The beating down of  leftism will continue until secular leftist morale improves.






Picture credit:

Description	English: Donald Trump Laconia Rally, Laconia, NH by Michael Vadon July 16 2015 WHEN Thursday, July 16, 2015 from 6:30 PM to 7:30 PM (EDT) WHERE Weirs Community Center - 25 Lucerne Avenue Laconia, NH 03246 Donald John Trump, Sr. (born June 14, 1946) is an American business magnate, investor, television personality, and author. Currently running for the office of President of the United States, he is the chairman and president of The Trump Organization and the founder of Trump Entertainment Resorts. Trump's lifestyle and outspoken manner, as well as his best-selling books and media appearances, have made him an American celebrity. He hosted The Apprentice, a US TV show. Trump is a son of Fred Trump, a New York City real estate developer. Donald Trump worked for his father's firm, Elizabeth Trump & Son, while attending the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and, in 1968, officially joined the company. He was given control of the company in 1971, renaming it The Trump Organization. Trump remains a major figure in the real estate industry in the United States and a media celebrity. In 2010, Trump expressed an interest in becoming a candidate for President of the United States in the 2012 election, but in May 2011, he announced he would not run. He was a featured speaker at the 2013 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), and, in the same year, began researching a possible presidential bid in the 2016 election. On June 16, 2015 at Trump Tower in Manhattan, Trump formally announced his candidacy for President of the United States in the 2016 election, seeking the nomination of the Republican Party.
Date	16 July 2015
Source	Own work
Author	Michael Vadon

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