Many of us in the atheist/agnostic/secular community are suffering from a delusion that we are winning the culture war. It's not true. We are losing. In fact, we might have already lost. The future looks grim for non-religious people.
The atheist author and blogger Ken Davis wrote an essay entitled Will Anti-Atheism Be Viewed as Bigotry?
Anti-atheism will be seen as bigotry by the public at large when hell freezes over.
Consider:
1. Sociological research indicates that atheists are widely distrusted in both religious cultures and nonreligious cultures. Source: https://www.independent.co....
According to a study published in the International Journal for The Psychology of Religion: "anti-atheist prejudice is not confined either to dominantly religious countries or to religious individuals, but rather appears to be a robust judgment about atheists." The study found that many atheists do not trust other atheists as well.
2. As a percentage of the world's population, atheism peaked in 1970 and it is now declining both now and in the foreseeable future. This is partly due to demographic reasons related to fertility rates of the religious and non-religious.
3. The Western/developed world is expected to experience a trend of overall desecularization by 2050 or sooner. Source: Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?: Demography and Politics in the Twenty-First, Century, Eric Kaufmann, Belfer Center, Harvard University/Birkbeck College, University of London at: http://www.sneps.net/RD/upl... and http://www.sneps.net/wp-con...
4. Peak secularization may have already been hit in several European countries: Conatus Newsreported in 2017 concerning Britain:
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.
In 2010, Professor Eric Kaufmanndeclared that the rate of secularisation flattened to zero in most of Protestant Europe and France. Pew Research indicated in a 2017 article entitled Religious Belief and National Belonging in Central and Eastern Europe: "...the comeback of religion in a region once dominated by atheist regimes is striking – particularly in some historically Orthodox countries, where levels of religious affiliation have risen substantially in recent decades." 5. China has the world's biggest atheist population. Evangelical Christianity is seeing explosive growth in China (see: In China, Unregistered Churches Are Driving a Religious Revolution ).
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.
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.
The leading Australian news organization the Herald Sunreported:
Richard Dawkins, the famous atheist, agreed weeks ago to come on my show. I am agnostic and had planned a conversation, not a confrontation, about his published views on Islam and Christianity.
But just 90 minutes before showtime Dawkins started to bombard me with listsv of questions I could not ask.
Read the article below and notice what is projected to occur as far as population growth in the religious regions of Africa/Middle East and in the less religious region of Europe:
Currently, African/Middle Eastern, religious migrants are moving to nonreligious/irreligious European countries with sub-replacement levels of births. If there is significantly more backlash against Muslim immigrants in Western Europe, perhaps more immigration to Western Europe will come from Eastern and Central Europe. Eastern Orthodox Christianity is growing in the Eastern/Central European area. Please watch the videos below.
A blogger wrote about the Thomas Smith (progressive/SJW/feminist atheist) vs. anti-progressive/anti-feminist atheist Carl Benjamin (commonly know as Sargon of Akkad):
This was the most brutal debate I have ever seen... And Thomas started off so cocky too! He started off like he was about to destroy Sargon. Then slowly, the facial ticks started to display. The cold sweat, the nervous gestures.
This is a[n]...amazing thrashing. I am speechless, I don't even know what I could do to add to this. If you want to watch someones world collapse, this is a really good resource just for that! You don't even need to care about the arguments. Like if you want to be a really good actor and you have to play the part of a SJW who is about to get savagely brutalized on stage for the entire world to see, look no further!
A large portion of the atheist population lives in Europe. And the right-wing populist surge in Europe has far from peaked and this is easily the most significant change to the European order since the end of the Cold War (see: Right Wing Populism Could Become ‘New Normal’, No End in Sight For Surge: Tony Blair Institute ). And what happens in European atheism is bound to spread to American atheism.
Throughout the interview/exchange/debate, the two parties showed much contempt for each other with Smith launching much invective and Benjamin mocking Thomas. As far as the substance of the debate which largely focused on politics, Smith fared poorly. And his body language was of an angry and nervous man. And near the end of exchange, Thomas angrily and cowardly left the debate stage. Of all the debates I have seen, I would have to say that this debate was the most embarrassing for the loser. And Carl Benjamin is no intellectual giant so Smith's loss is doubly bad for the progressive/SJW atheists.
Leftists have a reputation for dodging debates. So progressive/SJW (social justice warrior) atheists are unlikely to turn things around in terms of the debate front. In other word, they just had their debate Waterloo.
In the Google trends graphs above, the red graph line represents the number of worldwide Google searches for the world "atheist" from January 2004 to January 2018.
In January of 2004, the red "atheist" graph has a reading of 44. In January of 2018, the red "atheist" graph has a value of 42.
The blue line in the Google trends graph above represents the worldwide Google searches for the word "atheism". The yellow line above in the Google trends graph above represents the worldwide Google searches for the phrase "Richard Dawkins" . The green line in the Google trends graph above represents the worldwide Google searches for the word "agnostic". The purple line in the Google trends graph above represents the worldwide Google searches for the word "agnosticism".
As various atheists have noted, including atheist Aron Ra, the atheist movement is dead. We are moving into a post-secular age and scholars are increasingly using the term post-secular. The 21st century will be a century of faster and faster desecularization.
